


putting out fire (with gasoline)

by eddiespaghetti (foxwatson)



Series: i can stare for a thousand years (you wouldn't believe what i've been through) [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Everybody Lives, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Stanley Uris Lives, consider this how i would have made chapter 2 sort of, it's like the literal opposite of chapter 2 compliant, mostly by which i mean this is a full on complete rewrite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2020-11-08 01:56:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 47,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20827481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxwatson/pseuds/eddiespaghetti
Summary: 27 years after the summer of 1989, Bill Denbrough is still living in his parents' old house. When a boy ends up dead right at the corner of Jackson and Witcham, he knows it's time to call everyone home.The losers come back to Derry.This fic is my own interpretation of how I speculate Chapter 2 might have gone. It is the opposite of Chapter 2 compliant, there may be small nods but no real spoilers - instead I'm treating this as a sequel to the 2017 film and a part of my own verse.





	1. six phone calls

**Author's Note:**

> just to be very explicit: THIS FIC IS IN NO WAY BASED ON IT CHAPTER 2. if you want my chapter 2 based fix its, i have two, you can find them on my account. this is a fic based on the canon established in chapter 1, inspired by the book and the miniseries as well. i have taken many liberties. 
> 
> this is also technically a sequel in the sense that richie and eddie's characters here have been established in just be still with me, the first fic in this verse. however, that fic is more a prequel to this one than anything else? all you'd really need to know here is that richie and eddie are already together, living together in new york and engaged. if you'd like to know how that happens, feel free to read the fic!
> 
> title credit to david bowie's cat people (putting out fire)
> 
> enjoy the ride! 
> 
> CONTENT WARNING: the phone call scenes get dark right out of the gate in some cases, so while everyone lives, expect the canonical level of violence even in this first chapter, and this includes stan having a suicide scare/suicide attempt here although he does live in this universe. be careful if you need to!

_It happened one summer, it happened one time _  
_It happened forever, for a short time _  
_A place for a moment, an end to dream _  
_Forever I loved you, forever it seemed _  
  
_One summer never ends, one summer never begins _  
_It keeps me standing still, it takes all my will _  
_And then suddenly last summer_  
  
The Motels, _Suddenly Last Summer_

Your memory is a monster, you forget - it doesn’t. It simply files things away.  
It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own.  
You think you have a memory, but it has you.

  
John Irving, _ A Prayer for Owen Meany _

* * *

Bill Denbrough had stayed in Derry, because somebody had to. It could have been anyone really - it could have been Mike, if he hadn’t left to escape his grandfather’s farm and the memory of his parents. It could have been Stan, if his parents hadn’t felt the synagogue didn’t need them anymore. It could have been Ben and his obsession with the library, if his parents hadn’t taken him away, too.

Honestly, it could have been none of them, if Bill hadn’t moved back.

He’d been just out of college when it happened.

His writing had been suffering, his art seeming immature and basic, and Bill felt like he’d never write another worthwhile thing in his life - like nothing he could come up with would ever scare anybody, and it certainly wouldn’t ever get fucking published.

He didn’t want an office job, he didn’t want some kind of in between thing, he wasn’t seeing anyone seriously, so he decided to move back home, back into the house his parents had been unable to sell for nearly a decade.

The house sat there, just the same. The two bay windows like eyes, peering over the street, a silent observer. Bill had stood in front of it and shivered. It was no wonder the Denbroughs had never been able to sell the place. Just to look at it made you feel like there was something wrong with it, something that haunted you even if you walked away. Besides, in a place like Derry, nobody forgot that it was the place little Georgie Denbrough had lived.

He didn’t remember everything all at once, right when he crossed the city limit. Even standing in front of the house, nothing came rushing back. 

Once he moved in, he started to remember in bits and pieces. He would walk through the house and his own memories would play out in front of him like movies, flickering in and out of focus. Something awful he had seen in the basement. The time he’d forced everyone to gather in the garage to plan, and instead, something else had shown up with them.

Slowly, it came creeping back.

It.

About a week after he got there, he ran into Mike while he was grocery shopping. That was the thing about it almost being Mike - it really almost was.

He’d been left with his grandfather’s farm, saddled with it, and hadn’t known what to do. All the rest of them had left, and Mike had stayed and remembered and started to feel like he had no choice, until Bill had come back.

Bill had taken him out for a drink to catch up. Mike had explained that his farm was bleeding money, that all he’d ever wanted was to travel but it felt like Derry just wouldn’t let him go. He’d spilled his heart out to Bill, and Bill, feeling shamed and humbled by comparison, had listened. By the end, Bill told him to go. Go as far as he wanted, wherever he wanted, and to do something spectacular.

Mike had argued at first, but Bill pushed and pushed, because he wasn’t taking no for an answer. After everything that happened to Georgie, after everything that happened to him in Derry, Bill knew it was his responsibility to take on. He was the one that made all the rest of them promise. He could carry this for the rest of them, keep the lighthouse. It’s easy when he considers the alternatives.

The good news for Bill is, Derry has enough inspiration for a thousand terrifying graphic novels. He starts drawing, and it seems like he can’t stop, and every new thing that emerges from under his pencil is steadily more terrifying. Every word he writes is weighted with every rotting, stinking memory of Derry.

Remembering, and living in Derry as it turns out, pays when you’re a fucking horror writer. Bill is wildly successful, and he can’t ever leave his hometown, not really, not for more than a short book tour around the Northeast.

It’s the ultimate monkey’s paw wish - but at least it comes with the advantage of protecting all his friends for as long as he can.

He remembers that Ben used to say it was every 27 years. If It came back, it’d be in 27 years.

On his 40th birthday, Bill locks himself in his room and closes all the blinds and doesn’t answer his phone, and he draws and he writes and he barely stops to eat or drink or even look at a clock. Living in Derry leaves him in a state of steady, background paranoia. That day is nothing like that - it is a kind of all-consuming panic, an immovable hand around his throat.

Nothing happens.

He just picked the wrong day.

On the anniversary of Georgie’s death, Bill does what he normally does, goes to see his grave, to leave a little something there and say a quiet hello to his brother.

He steadily avoids the corner of Jackson and Witcham, because he can’t face it. Not on the actual day.

The next morning, The Derry Herald smears the gory details all over the front page. DERRY BOY’S HEAD FOUND IN STORM DRAIN, the front page screams in big, bold font, and Bill feels like all the blood drains out of his body.

When he manages to stumble over just a couple of blocks, feeling possessed, like he isn’t even moving his own feet, the crime scene is already mostly cleaned up.

It’s right by Jackson and Witcham - right where Georgie died. Right where It knows will hurt Bill the most.

He can picture it, just the way he used to be able to picture Georgie’s. The blood running in the water, the clown’s gloved hand creeping up out of the sewer, some new kid, somebody else’s brother, somebody else’s son, torn apart by that same goddamn thing, because they hadn’t killed it after all.

Of course they hadn’t.

He turns to leave when he sees it. A little paper boat, resting in the middle of the street. The same fucking paper boat he made and waxed and handed to Georgie that day, before Georgie went running outside and never came home.

It’s in that moment, Bill knows he has to call them. He doesn’t want to, but he can’t do it alone, and somebody has to. Somebody has to do something.

He starts with Beverly.

* * *

It’s not as if Beverly Marsh has never made a poor decision. She’s practically an expert. Still, Tom Rogan really takes the fucking cake. The restraining order Bev has gotten against him, the new one with an increased range, has finally gone through, but she wishes for the thousandth time that she never would have needed it in the first place.

She should have seen through him on first glance. She should have run off the first time he ever grabbed a little too roughly, held a little too tight.

Instead, here she is, celebrating another fucking restraining order, because it’s the one tiny win she can still have. She left him, kicked his sorry, disgusting ass to the curb, and now she gets to have wine and celebrate while she calls her best friend.

If, in what is perhaps more evidence of Bev’s history of poor decisions, that best friend is also her ex-girlfriend, Bev can at least say that relationship ended well.

Kay sighs, and it crackles over speakerphone.

“Bev, you know you just need to say the word and I’d kill him for you.” 

Bev snorts, swirling the wine in her glass. “I know you would. He’s not worth the jail time.”

Her phone beeps, indicating a call from an unknown number. In a sort of haze, Bev recognizes the area code - it’s a number from Maine, not far from where she grew up.

“Hey, Kay, sorry I’ve gotta go, I have another call coming in,” she says distractedly, and she lets Kay say goodbye before quickly switching over to the incoming call. “Hello?”

“Beverly Marsh?”

“This is she.”

For a minute, she assumes it’s a business call. The voice sounds unfamiliar, and ever since she and Kay stopped being business partners, she mostly does her design work freelance, hired by all sorts of independent fashion companies and clothing stores.

Then he speaks again.

“This is Bill Denbrough. F-from Derry?”

For one fleeting moment, the words don’t mean anything to her, but her heart rate doubles anyways. Then, air comes rushing into her lungs on a gasp and she remembers the day Bill had kissed her - the day she’d said goodbye to him down in the Barrens. Bill Denbrough, her first kiss.

“Bill?” She laughs, suddenly delighted. “God, how long has it been? Twenty-” An unpleasant feeling starts to creep up her spine. It’s not exactly like a tingle - more like a chill. Something bone-deep. She shivers. “Bill. How long has it been?”

“Twenty-seven years. Almost e-exactly. Do you r-r-remember anything?”

It’s a ridiculous question. Of course she remembers, she knows who Bill is, she remembers their kiss. But just as quickly she realizes that before she picked up the phone, she very literally hadn’t thought of Bill Denbrough in twenty-seven years. He hadn’t even crossed her mind. Not even in passing. If people asked her where she was from, she told them Portland - but that wasn’t true, was it? Not exactly.

First she’d been from Derry. A place she also hadn’t thought of in twenty-seven years.

The shiver returns with a vengeance.

“I remember you. And that we - we grew up together. You were my first kiss. But I didn’t remember until you called. Bill, what’s going on?”

“I think we’d b-better save most of that conversation for w-w-when you get here.”

“...Why would I come back to Derry, Bill?”

“Because It’s come back.”

Spots come over Bev’s vision, and she squeezes her eyes shut like it’ll stop it. When she does, though, all she sees is blinding light. White and bright like she’s looking directly into the sun and she’ll never see anything again and she’ll be blind and stumbling around the cold, dark, grimy sewer, the smell of rot invading her senses, the only thing she can still-

She gasps, and opens her eyes.

She’s at home. Still at home.

She goes back over to the counter, grabs her glass of wine and chugs the rest of it.

“Bill, I don’t know if I-”

“You p-promised, Bev. We all promised, remember? We have to do it t-together. You were the one that said it. We h-h-have to be together.”

The funny thing is, in that moment, Bev still doesn’t remember saying it. She has no recollection of anything Bill’s talking about. She can feel it, though. Like a tug, deep in her chest, like there’s a string pulling her towards Maine - pulling her home.

“Okay, Bill. Okay. I’ll come.”

He hangs up, presumably because he has other things to do. Bev goes and books the next flight from O’Hare to Maine.

* * *

Ben knows that the place he goes to drink is probably the sketchiest dive bar in a 100 mile radius. It looks like it was built in the 50s and hasn’t been touched since, including the decor. There’s a dusty jukebox in the corner, rusty signs that line the walls.

He can practically hear Richie Tozier’s voice in the back of his head, _ Hey I always knew you were a history nerd, haystack, but couldn’t you find a bar that was at least cleaned since you were born? _

Maybe there’s a reason Richie’s still so easy to hear in his head and the rest of them aren’t - except Bev, maybe, if he thought about it, but Ben is very decidedly not thinking about it, thank you very much. That’s the entire reason he has a goddamn highball glass full of whiskey in front of him.

The bartender has seen him a few times, because Ben has a common enough vice, and he tends to indulge when he’s lonely, which is most of the time. Being an architect, for all its charms, isn’t exactly the work of a social butterfly. Still, tonight, when Ben had walked in, the old man behind the bar had looked a little bit terrified - and he’d offered Ben whatever he wanted, on the house.

There must be a look in his eyes - the way he’s feeling, it must be obvious. No one will even come near him tonight, and it doesn’t bother him.

He can’t get Bill’s words out of his head long enough to try and hold a conversation with anyone else right now.

_ It’s come back. Every 27 years, Ben. Just like you s-said. _

Ben doesn’t remember saying it. He barely remembers anything about his old home town. In flashes, since Bill called, things have started to come back. The big windows in the Derry Public Library, where Ben had spent most of his time, and the way they used to let in sun in the summer. The way Ben used to stare out those windows, watch the other kids go by on their bikes. The way he used to watch the dust fly off a book and dance in that same sunlight.

He has a sort of sketch outline in his head - there’d been a group of them, before he left. Seven of them. Him, Bill, Bev, Richie - and Eddie. Eddie Kaspbrak. A couple of others.

There was something else, too, though. Something that brought them all together.

Something other than Henry Bowers.

Ben places a hand over his stomach, and feels the scar beneath his shirt.

He feels bile in the back of his throat, rubs a hand over his face and shudders, violently. He picks up the glass, and drinks and drinks, practically chugging.

People had commented - not many, but those who had seen it - people had told him before the scar looked like an H. Ben had laughed it off, shrugged, said he’d fallen somewhere and gotten a strange scratch or some bad stitches. That was all he’d remembered.

Now he remembers. He remembers the glint of the knife, how he’d struggled, how he’d kicked out and fallen and run and run and run like his life fucking depended on it. How he’d found the others, and Eddie of all people had managed to patch him up, Richie talking shit nonstop behind him. For the first time since Bill called, he smiles.

Then he thinks about Henry Bowers’ face again. Thinks he saw that face, once, covered in blood, looking down through some kind of window, the smell of rot and mildew and death-

If he were a different kind of man, maybe he’d be taken to more direct self-destructive tendencies tonight, but this is all he has. Drinking until hopefully he blacks out, waking up tomorrow and taking the first flight out to Maine.

Deep, deep in his chest, something is screaming that he can’t go - that he shouldn’t.

Then he looks back at the scar on his hand, the scar that he would have sworn wasn’t there yesterday, and he thinks, apropos of nothing, _ my heart burns there, too _, and he can’t not go back. Not when the rest of them will be there.

* * *

The restaurant is always busy at this time of night, even on a weekday. It’s the dinner rush. Mike is supervising in the kitchen when the kid that answers the phones comes over and taps him, says it’s someone asking for him.

They try to reserve the phone for carryout orders, but it’s not unheard of that someone wants to talk to Mike personally about catering, or just a particularly large order. His name had become synonymous with the restaurant practically right after he’d opened it, when the first paper had decided to come and write about what was sure to be the hip new black-owned vegan place of Houston, Texas. Owner and chef Mike Hanlon, etc. etc.

It had all seemed a little silly to Mike at first. He just wanted to make food he wanted to eat, and figured other people might like to eat it, too. He wanted to make good food and he wanted to make it without having to think about all the butchering that had happened on the farm where he’d grown up - all the animals he’d been forced to kill or watch be killed.

Then the restaurant had grown and grown and grown. More articles, more interviews, more attention. Awards for best vegan restaurant in Houston, and then best in the state. Specials on the Food Network, episodes of television shows, Youtube videos.

Mike’s been running the place happily for a decade now.

He’s still sweaty from the kitchen when he makes it to the phone, and he wipes at his forehead as he answers, feeling sticky and uncomfortable, but still smiling.

“Mike Hanlon here.”

“Mike it’s Bill. Bill Denbrough, f-from Derry.”

The sweat on his hand leaves the phone slippery, and as Mike grasps at it, it slides from his hand, bouncing off the floor and nearly yanking the cord out of the wall. He ducks down and picks the phone back up, pressing it back to his ear. “Shit, Bill, sorry, I just - I dropped the phone, don’t know what came over me.”

“Probably the s-same thing as everybody else.”

Bill starts to explain, and Mike gets cold all over, goosebumps rising on his arms in spite of the sweat.

Mike doesn’t remember half of what he says before he hangs up, or half of what Bill says.

He doesn’t remember much else, either. He doesn’t want to. He’s not gonna think about it.

Instead, he remembers the day Bill Denbrough told him to get the fuck out of Derry.

_ “Mike, this doesn’t have to be your job. I made everyone promise. It’s my responsibility.” _

_ “I’m already here! You can just turn right around and leave again, Bill, just forget it all again and go back to your life.” _

_ “What life? Mike, for god’s sake. I’m a writer. I can live here, work here, I’ll write the scariest goddamn graphic novels anyone’s ever read. You can do whatever you want! Get the hell out of this place, get a life, you deserve it! I’ll see you when you come back. If you have to come back. Let’s just both pray you don’t.” _

_ Possessed by something, and not sure what, Mike got down from the barstool and pulled Bill into a hug, pressing his forehead against Bill’s temple. _

_ “I’ll come back, Bill. I swear to you, I’ll come back. You’re not gonna carry this alone.” _

In his office, Mike looks down at his own hands and finds them shaking.

He wonders if he has anything from his grandfather’s old farm still lying around - wonders if he could find that damn bolt gun again, and keep hold of the ammunition this time.

There is one thing he knows, though, with bone-deep conviction. He owes Bill Denbrough his life, in more ways than one. He’ll be damned if he doesn’t go back to that rotten little fucked up town and finish what they all started - and this time, when he leaves, he’ll take Bill with him. Nobody deserves to be left behind in that place.

* * *

Richie’s right in the middle of rehearsal when the call comes. They’re in between scenes, and normally the only people who call him are Eddie or his agent, so he steps out to take it with a quick wave at everyone else.

It’s an unknown number for Derry, Maine. Richie shivers, and doesn’t know why, and then he answers, because it could always be someone casting or someone who wants him to look at a part.

For about ten seconds, he’s happy to hear from an old friend. He doesn’t recognize Bill at first, but shit, Richie’s never had the best memory, so he rolls with it.

Then Bill just keeps going, and going, and Richie barely manages to hang up before he runs to the bathroom, nearly tackling Kate McKinnon on the way, and throws up. At least he can apologize to Kate later, maybe, and at least he made it to the fucking bathroom.

His clammy hands shake where he grips the toilet bowl. The seat is cool against his forehead. He tries, desperately fucking tries, to use the physical sensations to ground himself.

Once he’s finished emptying the contents of his stomach, he thinks about Eddie.

_ Eddie. _

Eddie Kaspbrak, love of Richie’s teenage life, little asthmatic hypochondriac with a mouth dirtier than Richie’s if you caught him on a bad day. His freckles, his shorts, those stupid fucking tube socks he used to wear.

Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie’s fiance, with his glasses and his freckles and that funny little frown he has where he’s pretending to be annoyed but mostly he’s trying not to laugh because Richie knows just how to get to him and Eddie will always, always pretend that he doesn’t.

How did Richie forget?

How did he look at a picture of Eddie, his Eds, and not even fucking recognize him? How did they talk about where they grew up and neither of them ever even uttered the word Derry?

That fucked up town and all its bullshit, that’s how. There’s something down there - _ something in the sewer _.

The thought comes to him from somewhere deep, somewhere under every joke and every wall Richie’s ever built, way down below his impeccable impenetrable self-defense mechanisms.

Richie throws up again.

He shivers, uncontrollably.

What’s Eddie gonna say?

What if this ruins it? Ruins everything?

Richie feels like, now, he did recognize Eddie. Somewhere deep down, he had. Those same freckles, that same cute face. Richie never had a chance. He’d gone right for the same nicknames, felt the same pull he did as a teenager and just embraced it, let it all happen and waited to see if Eddie would ever just tell him to fuck off.

He hadn’t.

But he hadn’t known Richie was _ Richie _. That asshole with the big, ridiculous glasses who used to steal all the time in the clubhouse hammock, waiting there for ages over the time limit, just hoping every time that Eddie would get pissed off enough to climb in with him again.

He sits up enough to wrap his arms around his legs, curling up in the stall. He leans forward, and presses his forehead back against the cool porcelain.

_ “Richie!” He could hear Eddie walking up the stairs, and he shook his head, but couldn’t muster up the strength to answer. “Rich! Where the fuck are you-” _

_ Richie lifted his head just to see Eddie, standing in the doorway. “You’re probably gonna wanna stay over there, Eds. It’s gross in here. Should probably just close the door, quarantine me permanently.” _

_ Eddie frowned and stepped closer, then seemed to smell the bathroom, and stumbled back. “Oh, fuck. Are you sick?” _

_ “No, just an idiot.” _

_ “Meaning?” _

_ “...Food poisoning?” _

_ “...Rich.” _

_ “Yeah, okay, it wasn’t food poisoning, but no I’m not sick, I don’t wanna fucking - you should just go, you don’t wanna be here right now.” _

_ “Well no shit, asshole, of course I don’t wanna be in your fucking. Vomit-infested bathroom, but you didn’t show up at the Capitol and we had a- we were supposed to go to the movies. So I came here to look for your sorry ass and now here we are. I’m gonna go get you a glass of water and you’re gonna fucking explain.” _

_ Richie groaned, and closed the toilet to flush it. He pressed his face against the lid. _

_ When Eddie came back, he set the water down on the floor and slid it over towards Richie. Richie grabbed it, and drank it in long, grateful swigs. _

_ He sat there quietly, but Eddie just kept glaring at him, and then raising his eyebrows, expectant. _

_ “Oh for fuck’s sake, fine. My dad caught me stealing his cigarettes and he made me smoke the whole pack, okay? Fuck.” _

_ Eddie blinked, and scooted closer. “Rich, what the fuck? Seriously?” _

_ “Look, I know, I know it was a dumbass thing to do, Bev probably could have just stolen me-” _

_ But Eddie was there, then, throwing his arms around Richie’s shoulders, pulling him into a hug, completely neglecting how gross Richie was - how sweaty and how undoubtedly germ-covered. _

_ “Eds?” _

_ “Shut the fuck up. Your dad’s an asshole. Just. Shut up.” _

_ So Richie shut up. And Eddie hugged him, and got him a cold washcloth, and stayed with him for the rest of the afternoon, reading comics with him in his bedroom instead of fucking around at the Capitol. _

Eddie’s supposed to pick him up soon.

Then Richie can know for sure how badly everything’s fucked.

And then he’ll probably have to go to Maine either way.

Fuck.

* * *

Eddie almost crashes his car no less than three separate times on the way to the studio. It’s the worst possible time to be trying to drive through the city, and there’s traffic at every crossroad, and Eddie only told Bill to give him half an hour and he’s not gonna fucking make it in time.

He spends the entire drive muttering curse words under his breath.

When he does finally make it to NBC, he parks. The car is crooked, half in one space and half in another, and Eddie could not give less of a shit. He runs up to the rehearsal rooms, telling the receptionist he’s there for Richie, and he feels like if he looked any less frantic, any less like he just got the worst imaginable news, they would have told him to wait until rehearsal was over, but instead they let him in.

He can’t find Richie anywhere, but fortunately he runs into Kate McKinnon in the hallway.

“Hey, Eddie, right? Richie’s Eddie?”

They’ve met once before, at some holiday party. Since she and Richie are the only out cast members, it seems they try to have each other’s backs. Eddie’s pretty fond of her, from the stories he’s heard from Richie.

He nods at her. “Yeah. Where is he?”

“Fuck, you’ve got great timing - he ran right past me and into the bathroom like ten minutes ago, sounded like he puked his guts out. I don’t know what he came down with but I’m sure he’ll be glad you’re here to get him.” Eddie nods and walks away, only for her to call, “Other bathroom!”

“Thanks Kate!” He calls over his shoulder, and then he’s running again, shoving his way into the men’s bathroom.

It’s quiet, save for a dripping sink.

“Rich? You in here?”

“...Eds?” It’s more like a croak than an actual word. Worry twists in Eddie’s stomach, and he goes right for the occupied stall - Richie’s feet are now clearly sticking out from under it.

“Yeah, it’s me. Can you-” The stall door is locked, Eddie pushes at it just to see. “Can you unlock the door?”

His feet shift around, but Richie doesn’t stand up. Instead, he unlocks the door from his sitting position, and he leans against it as it swings out, his hand wrapped around one side of it.

There are bags under his eyes, and he’s covered in sweat. Eddie’s never seen him look this bad or this sick. At least - not since they were kids. Not in the last two years.

“Shit. Hold on.” Eddie goes over, gets some cold water on a few paper towels, and comes back. He wipes over Richie’s face, his forehead, then his mouth. He puts the last clean one against the back of Richie’s neck. “That help at all?”

Richie blinks up at him and nods. He’s so quiet. It makes Eddie shiver, too.

He kneels down in front of Richie, ignoring how disgusting the floor must be and how he’s definitely ruining his slacks, and wraps his arms around Richie’s shoulders, holding him close. He’s shaking more than Eddie is. Eddie just holds him tighter.

“I told Bill to wait to call you but I didn’t tell him to wait long enough, I’m sorry, I had no idea traffic would be so bad - I mean I knew but I forgot, I- Not forgot, I don’t know I just wasn’t thinking about it, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wanted to be here when he called you.”

Richie’s shoulders are shaking, still. Eddie shifts, trying to help, trying to fix what he can, and he finally realizes that Richie’s crying.

“Oh, sweetheart, hey, contacts,”

Eddie pulls back so Richie can lift his head, and he helps him take out his contacts, and then Richie looks at him and inhales sharply, like he’s trying to stop.

“Sorry,” he croaks out.

“Let’s get you to the sink and get you some water, huh? Can you stand up?”

The contacts are a lost cause, probably, but Richie’s actual eyes are more important. Eddie just shoves them in his pocket before he stands up and gets an arm around Richie’s waist, tugging him up, too. He’s unsteady, wobbling at the knees, but he holds enough of his own weight that they get to the sink, and Richie ducks his head under and Eddie helps get his hair out of the way so he can get some water.

Once he’s done, and a little more cleaned up, he finally seems able to stand on his own again.

“You - he called you, too, right? So you remember?” Richie asks.

Something terrible, then, occurs to Eddie. His only thoughts, as soon as Bill called, all the way over here, had been of making sure he was there for Richie when Richie remembered the bad parts. He hasn’t considered, until this exact moment, that the rest of their memories, their shared childhood, have implications for their entire relationship.

What if Richie knew when they were kids that Eddie had a crush on him and only ever pitied him? What if it wasn’t mutual then, and now with all of it clear in his head, two years don’t have anything on all the years they spent together back then?

Eddie holds himself upright by sheer force of will, and nods. “Yeah, the, the bad stuff and the- you. Us. Back then. I guess maybe I shouldn’t say us, I don’t, I guess we never-” He’s babbling, and he swallows the rest of the sentence, pushing it back. “I promised you I wouldn’t forget you. When I left. I’m so-” Eddie starts to tear up, too, then, behind his glasses, and he pushes them up to wipe at his eyes. “God, I’m so fucking sorry, Rich, I hate that place, I can’t believe I forgot about you, I loved you so much-”

It comes tumbling out, unbidden, and then Eddie startles, freezes, bites at his own lip like it’ll stop what he’s already said.

Richie sags forward and pulls Eddie into his arms, wrapping them around his waist and holding him close. “Oh, baby, thank fucking Christ,” Richie says, holding Eddie so tightly he couldn’t fall down if he tried. 

Eddie presses his face into Richie’s chest and breathes, and Richie still smells sour and sweaty, but under that is the smell of their house and their detergent and their shared closet. Eddie takes another deep breath there.

“I love you, too, Eds, I loved you then and I love you now and it scares the shit out of me that I didn’t remember, and I still don’t - I don’t remember everything, I’m not sure I want to.”

“I have a bad feeling we won’t have a choice,” Eddie says quietly.

He pulls back, Richie finally lets him, and he pushes Richie’s hair back off his forehead again.

There’s Richie’s freckles. Those same dark eyes. That weird, long nose. Eddie brushes his thumb over Richie’s cheek.

_ It was the night before Eddie left - hours before his mom would barge in and wake him up and drag him out. _

_ An hour ago, Richie had snuck in his window, just like it was another night, any other night when one or the other of them had a nightmare and they ran to each other - always right towards each other. _

_ Richie was mostly asleep, or it seemed like he was. The moonlight was streaming in through the window, and Eddie used it to look at the way Richie’s eyelashes fell against his cheek, the way his hair curled against the pillow. _

_ It felt like his heart was all twisted up in his chest, tied into knots he’d never untangle. _

_ He reached out and brushed his hand against Richie’s. Richie took Eddie’s hand like it was an instinct. _

_ Soon, Eddie watched as his eyes fluttered open. _

_ “Eds? You okay?” _

_ Eddie shook his head. _

_ Richie reached over and pulled him close, wrapped him up in a hug. Eddie shivered and held him back. _

_ Feeling like he’d never get another chance, Eddie tilted his head and kissed Richie’s cheek - just once, just right over his freckles. “Don’t forget me either, Rich,” he said quietly. _

_ “Never. Never, Eds.” _

Inhaling sharply, Eddie comes back to himself and looks at Richie, who’s looking back at him with the same wide eyes, like they both just had the same moment, got the same thing back.

“The night before I left?” Eddie asks.

Richie nods. “Eds… This is…”

“Can we go home before we have any more flashbacks, maybe?” Eddie asks.

For a moment, Richie opens his mouth, then he closes it like he thinks better of it. “Yeah, no, solid point, Eds. Let’s go home.” He licks his lips. “Also, it would be sort of nice to kiss you right now, except I just threw up like five minutes ago so I really probably need to brush my teeth first or I think maybe you’ll kill me.”

Eddie wrinkles his nose. “Yeah, I might.”

“Hey, I gotta live up to the trashmouth name, right?”

Breaking into a giggle, Eddie shoves at Richie. “Oh my god, stop, I can’t believe - I can’t believe we somehow remembered that, but not really, also stop trying to make me laugh right now this is so fucked up.”

“That’s my job, Eddie, baby.”

Shaking his head, Eddie laughs again, even as he tugs Richie along by the hand and finally gets him out of the bathroom. They’ll get to the car, and they’ll get home, and everything will be fine.

They’re going to be fine - at least for now.

* * *

From the time Bill calls to the time Stan reaches the tub, it’s like something else comes over him. All he feels is numb, like a kind of static descended on him along with Bill’s words and hollowed him out completely.

Pat finds him when he’s barely pressed the razor to his skin, while the first cut is still shallow. With the water still running, and his complete lack of response, Pat just busts the door open and then stops, both of them looking at each other in absolute, abject horror.

It’s not like this was something Stan wanted to do to his husband - it’s not even like in that moment he remembers the exact steps that had led him here, or any kind of logical thought process. It was like he couldn’t think at all, couldn’t consider any other options

When they’d both recovered from the moment, Pat had come over and taken the razor gently from his hand, helped him stand from the tub and turned off the water. He’d wrapped a bandage around Stan’s wrist, and then helped him get dressed before bringing him into the bedroom where they could both sit down.

Now Pat’s holding him, and Stan’s still struggling to speak, the grip of terror lingering tight around his throat.

“Did it have something to do with that phone call?” he asks.

Stan nods against his chest, taking one long, deep breath - in, and then out.

“How could anything like that make you think there wasn’t any other option, Stanny?”

Choking out something between a laugh and a sob, Stan shakes his head. “You’d never believe me if I told you - I wouldn’t even know what to tell you, because I don’t remember. I can’t remember. I just know that I’m so fucking terrified it feels like there’s something sitting on my chest, and I made a promise - I made a promise to the best friends I ever had, and I don’t think I can keep it.”

“What kind of promise?”

“That we’d all come home. If we ever needed to. There was a reason, though, a reason I can’t remember and that’s what’s so… I know there’s something I’m forgetting, I can feel it. I forgot everything about it, about all of them, until Bill called just now.”

Pat brushes his fingers through Stan’s hair, and Stan tries as hard as he can to relax - he can’t seem to do it. “Sounds like you repressed something pretty awful that happened to all of you when you were kids. It could be good for you to see them all again - to have a support system of people who went through it with you.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to see them, I just can’t, I can’t go back there.”

“What if I went with you?”

Stan shoots up, pushing at Pat’s shoulders, pushing him back and away. “No, absolutely not, no fucking way. You can’t go anywhere near that place, not until it’s - no.”

“...That place really fucked you up, didn’t it?”

Stan laughs, hysterical. “Oh, God, you have no idea.” He goes to rub at his own face and suddenly feels scars - all along the sides of his face. Were those there before? He can practically feel another panic attack coming on. “They need me. They need me to go back there, but even the first time I feel like I barely got out alive.”

“There’s nothing that says you have to stay, you know. You could go and see them and turn right back around and come back. I’ll take you to the airport, I’ll pick you up whenever you fly back, call me at 3 AM, I don’t care. This is scary, you’re scaring the shit out of me - but I don’t think it’s gonna help you to just not go.”

The entire idea that Pat could support him through this is something he hadn’t even considered. He hadn’t considered, either, that he could just leave. Derry feels like a mouse trap like that, like if Stan goes he’ll never get out again, but Pat puts it so simply that it doesn’t seem that way. “If I didn’t go, would you hate me?”

“No. No, that would be fine, too. It’s your decision.”

Ironically, that’s what gives Stan the courage to go over to the closet and start looking at his clothes. Pat thinks it’s going to be fine - and Stan thinks about Bill, and Mike, and Richie, and Eddie, and Bev and Ben and how this is his one chance to see them all again. He isn’t brave, traditionally speaking, but maybe he can be brave enough to get on a plane and go see his friends. Maybe he can do that much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well here we go everyone!! this fic will probably not post as frequently as just be still with me did - i will post at least one chapter a week, for sure, and maybe two a week when i'm feeling ahead of the curve.
> 
> i hope you all enjoyed the first chapter! let me know if you did! i know the style here is different, but i really wanted to go full like, stephen king on it. some chapters will stay with eddie and richie, but other chapters will do this, where we'll see all of the losers. i'm happy to answer any non-spoiler questions, and please either way let me know what you think!
> 
> thanks for reading!


	2. been so long (the reunion)

_Have you been fast asleep_  
_And have you heard voices,_  
_I've heard them calling my name,_  
_Is this the sweet sound that calls the young sailors,_  
_The voice might be one and the same._  
_I've heard it too many times to ignore it_  
_It's something that I'm supposed to be_

The Muppets, _ The Rainbow Connection _

And the end of all our exploring   
Will be to arrive where we started   
And know the place for the first time. 

T.S. Eliot, _ Little Gidding _

* * *

Once they get to the car, and they’re on the way back to the house, Richie is eerily silent again. In some small way it reminds Eddie of the time Richie got the part on SNL - he knows that Richie gets quiet when something really important is happening. The problem is, right now, the last thing Eddie needs is to be left to his own thoughts. Some part of him won’t stop wondering if Richie will remember more and suddenly have regrets, in spite of their little moment in the bathroom. Eddie needs the distraction, needs Richie to say something, anything, to crack a stupid joke or do a voice or put some music on or _ something _.

“Hey Rich - you know you’re being terrifyingly quiet, right? You’re aware of it?”

“Well I- I mean I’ll admit I’m zoning out a little bit here, but it’s a little bit intentional, I just - I figured we should avoid you having some kind of fucking flashback while you’re driving, right? I don’t know how this works, I don’t want us to crash the car before we even get back to the house because I mentioned something totally off the wall and then suddenly we’re off in the repressed memory funfair again.” 

“...Okay, that’s actually an extremely reasonable explanation, but please just say something because I’m going quietly insane and I’m kind of on the verge of a panic attack, which I don’t think is unreasonable given the situation but it isn’t going to help us.”

“Right. Right. Uh- so how are you feeling on Tozier-Kaspbrak versus Kaspbrak-Tozier?” Richie asks.

Eddie glances over at him, then remembers that Richie probably can’t see him very well and makes a little confused noise. “Is now the best time for this conversation?”

“Well it doesn’t seem like it’s gonna catapult us down memory lane!”

“I would posit to you that you cannot prove that I didn’t used to doodle things like that in my notebook in high school, and even if I did right now I might not remember,” Eddie tells him.

Richie does pause for a moment at that, seemingly pulled up short. Then, he says softly, “Well that’s my whole point, then. Clearly us getting married is long overdue and I really really wanna marry you as soon as fucking possible, so we gotta figure this shit out.”

The road gets a little bit blurry until Eddie blinks a few times, clearing the tears from his eyes. “If you make me cry while I’m driving we’re still gonna end up crashing, dipshit.”

“Oh, uh-”

“I wanna marry you, too. I love you. Asshole.”

“Love you, too, Eds.” Richie reaches over, knowing better than to grab Eddie’s hand, and squeezes at his arm instead, just gently. “Seriously, though.” 

“Kaspbrak-Tozier is in alphabetical order at least, but do you have a preference? You’re the one with a name-based career and an IMDB page you’ll have to update.” Eddie watches Richie grin out of the corner of his eye. 

“I like Kaspbrak-Tozier, too. Richie Kaspbrak-Tozier.” Richie reaches over to squeeze Eddie’s arm again. “Eddie Kaspbrak-Tozier.” 

Eddie sniffles, just a little bit. “Okay new subject, get creative, please.” 

“Right. Okay. Music is dangerous, way too much music, music obviously is gonna make us remember shit, I should probably stop talking about it… I don’t remember a goddamn thing about rehearsal today anymore, so that’s off the table. I. I remember the day that I saw you at the airport. When we met again, I saw you at the bottom of the escalator and I thought you looked sort of silly in glasses, and then I thought actually you looked pretty cute, and then I thought well that’s pretty fucking weird, I don’t even know him, why do I have such strong opinions about his glasses? And I said your full name and something felt weird about it, like it was wrong, and the nicknames just sprang right back into my head, and for some part of me it was like we’d never been apart, I think. It was always there, deep down. You mouthed off at me like we were kids again, not that I realized it then, but it felt right, you know? You surprised the hell out of me and you made me laugh and it was like your car that day felt like home. And I remember the first time you asked me to move in with you. I don’t think I ever really explained what the hell I was thinking when I tried to turn you down. We never talk about this shit because it’s terrifying but it’s better than anything else right now, so what the hell, right? I wanted to, I wanted to so bad that it scared me. My first thought was yes, and then I thought, don’t be a fucking idiot, Tozier. So when I told you no and you played it off like it didn’t actually mean anything and it was platonic I was terrified if I did move in I’d fuck it up just by how much I actually really cared about you when I wasn’t supposed to, at least not as much as I did. And obviously that all panned out just fine, but that was the problem - I always wanted to but I got scared. And I guess - You know everything you said that day, about how we might not see each other? What if you were right? What if I’d said no and we had forgotten each other again? It was all gone before that day in the airport, it was just like I never knew you, and looking back I think there’s always been this big empty hole where you should have been, but it’s not like I realized. I just lived with it until you showed back up. So I guess you were right. God, I’m just so glad you figured that out, Eds, you’ve always been smarter than me. I’m so glad we got two years.” 

Richie talks for so long that Eddie can’t even believe it. He can, a little, because it’s Richie, but the sheer vulnerability of everything he says is shocking. It’s more than an effective distraction. Eddie hangs on Richie’s every word, and listens to his breathing as it picks up close to the end. For once, at the end of Richie’s little monologue, Eddie is the one to reach over and grab Richie’s hand, even though he’s still driving. For that one moment it doesn’t matter. “Don’t say it like that,” Eddie tells him urgently. “I know what you’re doing, but don’t, okay? We’re gonna be fine. All of us, we’re gonna be fine.” 

“Okay. Okay, Eds, if you say so.” 

“I do say so, because I’m also fucking terrified, but we’re not gonna just abandon our friends, we’re gonna go back, and nothing’s gonna happen to you. And we’ll get married after, and we’ll actually have people other than Kate McKinnon to invite to our wedding.” 

That, finally, gets a surprised laugh out of Richie, and Eddie gives his hand another quick squeeze. 

Eddie holds his hand all the way back to the house. When they get out of the car, before they even get inside, he pulls Richie into another hug, holds him close and keeps him there. “I love you so much. I’m saying that again because I don’t say it enough, I’m sorry.” 

“Eds, baby, come on, you say it plenty, don’t - just because you call me asshole as a pet name, whatever, I know that you mean it.” 

Richie is running his fingers through Eddie’s hair now, but Eddie just shakes his head where it’s pressed against Richie’s chest. “I know. Just feel like I should have said it more, before. We’re not 13 anymore, it’s fine for me to say it.” 

“Come on, let’s get inside.” 

Obviously, whatever possessed Richie in the car has passed, mostly, and now even though they’re both shaking, Richie is the one tugging Eddie inside by the hand. 

They go inside, and their house abruptly feels oddly quiet and… normal. Just this morning, they stood in that kitchen, flirting over coffee. Richie had made toast for both of them while he was singing The Rainbow Connection in a Kermit voice, and Eddie had laughed and shooed him away from the food to finish up. Everything had been perfectly lovely and mundane and domestic, just like it had been for the last two years, and now it feels like they might never get any of that back.

“We should - book a flight? And you’ll have to text someone at SNL-” Eddie starts. 

“Oh yeah, sorry I can’t come into work this week, I have to go die in Maine-” 

“Rich, stop, look at me.” 

Richie turns, then, and he sighs as he makes eye contact. “I know you want me to stop saying it but it’s not gonna make it any less likely.” 

“It’s like you’ve never even listened to an audiobook about the power of positive thinking. Don’t. Okay? My- my brain does that for me, all I can think about right now is every terrible fucking thing that could happen to one or both of us and I don’t even really remember what’s up there, I just know how scared I am, but you have to stop. I need you to stop. Please.” 

“...Alright. Okay. I’ll try. Sorry, Eds.” 

He leans down and kisses Eddie’s forehead, and Eddie pulls him into another proper kiss. “Now you talk to work. I’ll text Marty. Are we flying?”

“...Could we drive? Wake up early tomorrow and go? I’m not exactly in a big hurry.”

“Okay. Sure. Road trip, why not? Go make a playlist or something.” 

Richie laughs, and lingers, tugging at Eddie’s hands before he pulls away. “Just wish we’d kept some of our old mixtapes. I could serenade you with all of the obvious love songs I used to put on there.”

So, in a way that almost feels normal, they split up and work on calling in and packing. Eddie gets the toiletries together, Richie texts one of the writers at SNL, Eddie texts Marty, Richie sits down at his computer and starts putting together a Spotify playlist of music not older than the last two years - just in case.

Once he’s finished packing suitcases with his own clothes, and Richie has finished putting together his own duffel bag, Eddie just goes over and leans against Richie, forehead against his back.

“This fucking sucks.” Richie says.

Eddie snorts. “Yeah, that’s sort of putting it mildly.”

“I know that! I just- for like ten seconds after Bill called I was so happy, I thought oh shit I remember this guy, I remember all of us, we used to have so much fun, and I remembered you and I- Well, honestly I thought you’d show up and remember you thought I was the worst or something-”

“Oh God, I did the same thing.”

Richie turns around, startled, and blinks down at Eddie. “What, really?” He’s put on his glasses, now, and the effect makes Eddie blush - and that’s ridiculous because they’re engaged and they’ve been together for two years, but it’s not just Richie anymore, it’s _Richie_. The first boy Eddie ever fell in love with, the boy he would have done anything to impress, the boy he actively found any excuse to touch, the boy he fantasized constantly about having his first kiss with. His Richie is now both Richies. 

“I thought- I thought maybe you knew when we were kids that I had a crush on you, the way I always used to climb in the hammock and invite you over to read comics, and- I don’t know. I just got so afraid you’d remember-”

“What, remember that you were like the love of my teenage life? Eds I was the one staying in the hammock every time you climbed in, I was the one always climbing in your window and shit, I was- God, I mean I guess we were both really fucking obvious.”

Eddie laughs and presses his face against Richie. He smells better now - more like home, more like their bedroom and his own deodorant and body wash. Eddie lingers there. “Yeah, I guess we were. Too bad we were idiots.” 

“Absolute morons,” Richie agrees, and he kisses the top of Eddie’s head. 

They climb into bed, and they put on old episodes of SNL as distraction.

“Do you- what all do you remember?” Eddie asks. 

“Stuff with you, but in patches. Some stuff with all of us. The arcade at the Capitol, stuff… Stuff not from that summer.”

“Yeah. Yeah, me too.”

Eddie rolls onto his side and turns out the lamp, so the only light is the flickering television. Then he turns back to Richie, just looking at him, watching his face. Richie turns and raises his eyebrows.

“I just feel like - maybe we should try to remember? Together? Some of it, not - I don’t know that we can remember all of it until we’re there, but maybe we could remember some now, good stuff or- whatever. Whatever we can remember. Then maybe there’s less chance of a flashback or anything on the trip tomorrow?” 

“...Okay. Yeah. Why the hell not, right?” Richie pauses, and rubs a hand over his face. “God can you- not that I want to, but can you fucking imagine if we had to do this ourselves. I don’t think I could do this without you, Eds. You are - you’ve always been brave, you know? Even when we were kids. You were afraid of every germ and disease under the sun but you were brave about the shit that counted. I feel like I’m only brave because I’m stupid.”

Eddie pokes him hard in the shoulder for that. “Stop. Just because the only thing I can really remember right now is you jumping practically headfirst into the quarry - I’m sure you did something brave that wasn’t just stupid.”

Richie blinks at him. “Shit. You’re right. God I really was stupid.”

Eddie punches him this time, just a nudge with his fist against Richie’s arm, even as he grins. “Stop it! You’re brave, I’m brave, we’re both really fucking brave and… I don’t know. I know back then we all would have done anything for each other. And I think we did. Sometimes we did. That summer - I feel like you did something really brave. And we’ll get it back and I’ll wave it in your face.”

Scoffing, Richie reaches over and ruffles his hair. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. You were my hero. And I remember - I remember the way you always used to take care of all of us. Not just me. You kept all that shit in your fanny pack, bandaged us up, tried to keep us from getting hurt. You were like the ultimate dad friend.”

Embarrassed, Eddie hides against Richie’s shoulder. “Oh, God, I forgot the fanny pack. It was practical! It was the 80s! I had shit I had to keep in there!”

“Yeah, your fucking fake meds - oh my God, your mom. You remembered that stuff, did she - did she still do that shit after you moved?”

This time, when Eddie laughs, it’s without any real humor. “Yeah. Of course she did. I- something about that time I stood up to her, I still don’t remember the specifics, but I remembered enough to know it was all fake and that I could stand up to her. So I did. It’s the only reason I’m - you know, I’m out and I’m only on anxiety meds. If I had forgotten everything, if I had gone right back to that stuff, God knows where I’d be now. I still - you were the first guy I ever brought back to this house, you know that? The only one, now. It felt like she was still here somehow, like if I brought someone back she’d know and - you moving in fixed all that. I think part of what she meant, part of the reason she was like that, was because she really did think I was… sick." 

This time, Richie tugs him close, pulling Eddie tight against his chest and keeping him there. “Fuck that. Fuck all of that. Thank God - thank God we found each other again. If you were still out there - I mean I would have swooned on sight when I saw you in Maine, but who knows if you would have been into that?”

“I’m always into you, for some godforsaken reason. Hideous Hawaiian shirts, giant glasses, awful mom jokes, none of it matters, apparently.”

Richie laughs at that, and Eddie finally pulls back enough to kiss him. 

Shifting around, Eddie gets settled in next to Richie again. “I think we’re not gonna remember most of that summer until we’re there. Do you feel that, too?” 

“Yeah. No. It’s not just you. It’s like there’s something sort of- blocking it. We might remember stuff about each other, but I think whatever happened is gonna come back when we’re there.”

Eddie nods. “Right so let’s - we can keep talking and maybe we can try to get some sleep.”

“I think that’s a little optimistic, babe, but I guess we’ll see.”

So they talk, and they remember. Eddie tells stories, too, from all the years in between Derry and meeting Richie again, anything that hasn’t come up already in the last two years. Richie does, too, telling Eddie all his worst college stories, his handful of awful dating stories, how he got his first standup gigs and briefly worked at a radio station. It’s some combination of catching up and trying to remember, trying to make up for two years of not realizing how much they’d been missing.

Richie does fall asleep, eventually. Eddie takes his glasses off his face and places them on the bedside table. He watches Richie for a little while, just the rise and fall of his chest. Eddie falls asleep that way after a while, his hand on Richie’s chest, right over his heart.

When they wake up in the morning, neither of them want to get up and going. Eddie starts to get out of bed and Richie tries to drag him back in, kissing him just the way he knows Eddie likes, slow and deep and lingering.

“Stop, Rich- stop or we’ll never get there today.”

“And?”

“Don’t you ‘and?’ me, come on, let’s go make breakfast, come on.”

So Eddie drags him out of bed. They shower together, and make breakfast together, and Richie essentially refuses to let go of him. He stands behind Eddie, hands on his hips, chin over his shoulder in the kitchen. He wraps his arms around Eddie in the shower and gets in the way while Eddie tries to wash off.

Eddie gets it, he does, and he doesn’t even try to push Richie away. He doesn’t want to. Still, he hates how much Richie seems to think they might actually not come back. He wishes there was some way to put Richie at ease, but he can’t put himself at ease either, can’t get rid of the constant sense of danger that’s been thrumming in his veins since Bill called.

They make it to the car a little later than they planned, get started a little slowly, but then they’re driving to Maine, listening to Carly Rae Jepsen most of the way there because apparently that was the best distraction either of them could think of.

The Derry Town House looks just the same when they pull up. The entire town looks like very little has changed in 27 years. Eddie had been driving, but Richie had exclaimed at various points that much in the town was still standing or even still operational. The Capitol appeared to still be open for business, as did Keene’s Pharmacy. Eddie shuddered to think of Mr. Keene, still there, still as unsettling as ever.

They check in hastily, go up to the room, and drop off their things, avoiding the narrowed eyes of the desk clerk over their sharing a bed. That clearly hasn’t changed.

Bill texts them, along with several unknown numbers. 

**Meet at Jade Palace at 2:00.**

No one bothers to respond - Eddie thinks they’ll either all be there or they won’t, and in the end it won’t matter if they texted or what restaurant they went to.

He and Richie head to the restaurant around 1:30, to be sure they’ll get there on time, mostly at Eddie’s insistence. They get back in the car and head over, and Richie seems more and more fidgety the closer they are.

“You good?” Eddie asks him.

“I guess. Not really. I should be happy or excited or something to see all our friends, I know, but I’m just- I feel itchy, here. Wrong. Like I’m waiting for something fucked up to happen.”

“I think we all are. I think that’s basically why we’re here, Rich.”

“Yeah, that’s not helping.”

Eddie takes his hand as soon as they’re out of the car in front of the restaurant. He squeezes, and holds on, and rubs his thumb over Richie’s ring. It’s the smallest, quietest way he can think of to keep saying, ‘_I’m here, we’ll make it to the other side of this, I promise_.’

The restaurant is quiet, and mostly empty. There’s tinny music playing over the speakers, something atmosphere appropriate that Eddie doesn’t recognize.

Then they make it into the party room, and discover Bill and Mike, talking quietly with their heads leaned in close to each other. Eddie, of course, hasn’t really seen either of them since they were kids - he’s seen Bill’s author photos, pictures from Mike’s restaurant reviews after a recent cursory Google search, but it’s funny because part of him just knows. He sees them and he knows right away who they are.

Richie clears his throat. “Sorry for interrupting the adult virgin convention, we’re looking for the subdivision, the Losers Club, maybe you’ve heard of it?" 

Mike and Bill turn, then, and Eddie has to slap a hand over his own face, trying not to laugh, because it’s terrible and ridiculous but it’s exactly like something Richie would have said when they were kids and that alone makes him so irrepressibly fond and embarrassed all at the same time. 

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Trashmouth,” Bill says back, and Eddie laughs. 

Richie has the audacity to turn and look offended, but Eddie just smacks him on the arm and goes to hug Bill and Mike, the tension momentarily lifted.

“I’m so sorry about him,” he tells Mike, and Mike grins.

“Not like you could ever do anything about it when we were kids either. Bill says you two are engaged, though, is that true?” 

Eddie rolls his eyes but holds up his hand, still a little proud of the ring. “It’s only been about a week - but we met again about two years ago. Not that either of us realized, just- It’s weird, obviously.”

“Tell me about it.” Mike pats Eddie on the shoulder and pulls back a little. “Bill called me while I was at work one night and I felt like I almost had a heart attack. I knew I had to come back, and I’m glad I did but - just remembering all of this was enough for me.”

Shaking his head, Eddie shudders a little. “Yeah. Us, too. We’ve had kind of a rough time. And we- there’s still things we know we’re forgetting.”

Mike nods, but before things can get too serious, Bev walks in. 

Richie says, “Beverly Marsh! The only woman I’ve truly loved!” and rushes over to her. 

She giggles but rolls her eyes vigorously over Richie’s shoulder as he hugs her. Richie gives her a smacking kiss on the cheek, too, and she shoves him off. “Alright, that’s enough of that. You haven’t changed at all have you?”

“You kidding? Eds over there is makin’ an honest woman out of me!” Richie switches into some terrible attempt at a Southern Belle voice for the last bit, startling another little laugh out of Bev and making Eddie blush, ridiculously enough. 

“At least I’m trying,” he manages to get out as he walks over. “Hi, Bev. Sorry.” 

“I have a feeling you spend a lot of time apologizing for him.” 

Eddie laughs a little, even as Richie throws an arm over his shoulders. “Not really, actually. There are ways he’s grown up - I think you all just bring out the teenager again. Or being here does.” He glances up at Richie, and they make eye contact. “Unfortunately, I have to admit it’s almost nice to have it back for a little bit.”

Richie tugs him in again, kisses the top of his head, and then lets him go. He goes back to talking to Bev, and Eddie gives them both a little wave before going back to Bill and Mike.

Before any of them get too comfortable, though, Ben gets there - or at least, someone ridiculously handsome walks in, and Eddie knows _ oh my God, that’s Ben_, and everyone’s sort of staring at him with their jaws dropped.

“Hey everyone!” he says, and it’s that same tone, that same friendly sort of shy way he always had, so immediately good-natured and kind it shines through. 

Bev goes to hug him right away, says something quiet to him and makes him blush and laugh.

Eddie goes over next, but before Richie can get one in, Eddie turns and tells him, “Rich, I’m leaving you for Ben.”

Ben laughs and blushes even more, and Richie gets surprised into it, too, so they’re all just standing there snickering together.

Eddie reaches out and pulls him into a hug, and Ben goes willingly, giving Eddie a good lingering rock back and forth sort of hug, rubbing at his back while he does it. 

“Hey, Eddie. Hey, Rich. God, you guys look - everyone looks great.” 

“Eds has a point, though, nerd alert - nobody looks as good as you, yet. I think you won. Congratulations. Apparently you’re getting my fiancé out of it.”

Ben raises his eyebrows, and Richie pulls Eddie’s hand up to show off the ring again. 

“So you guys - wow, somebody’s gonna have to fill me in on this,” Ben tells them, looking between Eddie’s hand and Richie’s face and Eddie’s mildly embarrassed expression.

“We can tell the whole story over lunch,” Eddie tells him.

“Yeah, we’ve got a real rom com, we can reenact the important bits, make it dinner and a show,” Richie says, and Eddie elbows him before turning around to check in with the others again.

People are grabbing drinks from a little bar right by the party room, so Eddie gets himself a glass of wine and Richie something a little stronger - but just one glass. Ever since Richie moved in, they’ve been careful about Richie’s drinking, and the way he tends to use it as a coping mechanism. Now seems like it’s probably a good time for something strong, something to brace them against whatever comes out when they really start remembering, but Eddie’s going to keep a close eye on it all the same.

They’re all starting to settle in around the table, Richie and Eddie together, Bev beside Richie, Ben beside Bev, Bill beside Ben, Mike beside Bill, and they realize, then, that Stan is officially late.

“Anyone wanna take bets on him actually showing up?” Richie asks, waving his phone around with the clock pointed outward. 

“I’d b-bet my life on it,” Bill says, a little too gravely.

Richie goes a little gray, then, just for a second, and Eddie rubs at his shoulders and nudges at the glass of water also on the table. At first, he ignores the water and takes another sip of his drink, closing his eyes. Then Eddie nudges again and Richie finally picks up the glass of water to take an extremely performative sip. 

“Did you guys start without me? That’s so fucking typical,” Stan says from the doorway, and Richie almost spits out his water.

Stan looks good, too. He’s still neat and put together, his hair in practically the same style as when he was a kid. There’s a hint of a smile on his lips even in spite of his words. 

They all cry out “Stan the man!” almost in unison, and he rolls his eyes even as he takes the remaining empty seat between Eddie and Mike.

Just like that, they’re all there.

It’s easy to fall into a kind of pattern, all of them nudging at each other just like they always did. Richie reaches over Eddie just to annoy Stan, Eddie rolls his eyes at Mike. Bill tells a story about his writing, and most of them sit in awe, except Ben cracks a joke about Bill’s penchant for unnecessary sex scenes. Bev, clearly remembering as she says it, asks if anyone who once loved New Kids on the Block can criticize anyone else’s taste, and Ben blushes as she says it.

Then, finally, Stan turns and says, “Eddie, are you and Richie actually engaged? Explain this to me.”

“Finally! It’s time for our beautiful story, a Romeo and Juliet of the Loser’s Club if you will-”

“God, please, if you tell it we’ll be here all fucking night, Rich, I love you but not that much. We met again two years ago - I was his driver in New York, he was auditioning for SNL. We- We didn’t recognize each other. Maybe subconsciously we did, but not in a way that either of us realized. We spent like two weeks together?” He turns, and Richie nods, watching him with a little smile. “Then Rich needed a place to live so I offered my giant empty house, where I had once lived with my mother, it was all very sad and ridiculous, and first he said no because he was an idiot, and then he said yes and we’ve been together ever since.”

“You moved in together after two weeks?” Bev asks them.

Richie nods and drops his arm from the back of Eddie’s chair down to Eddie’s shoulders. “Yeah, well, at the time it seemed fucking insane but in retrospect - Eddie sort of realized on some level that if we didn’t stay together we might forget each other again. We both sort of felt it and didn’t know how to say it. So he tried, and I knew what he meant and then we stuck together, and we made it. Best decision I ever made.” He presses a kiss to Eddie’s temple, and Eddie sort of glances around to check everyone’s reactions - but most everyone is just smiling.

“God, I wish I could go back to forgetting how ridiculous both of you were growing up - sharing the hammock in the clubhouse and trying to pretend it was normal,” Stan says, shaking his head.

“Don’t be jealous, Stan, we can make this a throuple,” Richie tells him with a wink.

Stan laughs. “Yeah, no, very happily married, my husband is better than either of you, sorry.”

“Husband?” Bev asks, smiling over at him.

Nodding, Stan hides his smile behind his drink for a moment. “His name is Pat, he’s a teacher, we met in college.”

“Mm, I met my ex-girlfriend when we were in design school together,” Bev tells them with a smile of her own.

“Wait, wait, okay, four out of seven so far - are any of us straight?” Richie asks.

Mike laughs, but shakes his head. Bill shrugs. Everyone turns to Ben.

“I can’t believe I have to say this, but I listened to New Kids on the Block - I had a poster of all of them on the back of my bedroom door, which Bev can attest to - and you guys really think I’m straight?”

“Well I’ll drink to that!” Richie says, and they all clink their glasses together in the middle of the table, grinning.

The food gets there soon after their toast, a full arrangement with all kinds of options - there’s something for everyone, all on platters that encourage them to pass around and share.

They eat, and laugh, and joke.

Eventually, though, the conversation takes a serious turn. Ben talks about struggling with his body image, Bev admits to her recent narrow escape from an abusive relationship. They all still have the scars, mentally and physically, from their childhoods in Derry and all the shit that came with that - with being a Loser, for better or for worse. 

“I- uh. This is really gonna bring the room down, but when Bill called me, I tried to kill myself,” Stan tells them all, pushing up the sleeve on his cardigan to reveal the bandage wrapped around his wrist. “Pat stopped me.”

“Stan,” Eddie says quietly, and he takes Stan’s free hand in his own. Mike, on his other side, pats him on the shoulder. 

“I threw up,” Richie tells him. “Eds found me in the bathroom afterwards.” 

“I drank so much I blacked out,” Ben replies.

They all just look at each other for one long moment, relieved that they’ve made it this far. Happy to see each other, before the moment is completely ruined.

“It’s nice to know I wasn’t alone in… feeling all of that,” Mike admits.

Eddie nods. “I missed everyone, I think we all did but there’s something - something I barely remember, almost everything about the summer we all first met is gone, and I have a feeling that’s why you called, Bill.”

Bill looks around, at each of them in turn. “Do you want me to st-start, then? I can’t make you remember, but I can tell you what’s h-h-happening now - tell you what’s d-doing it.”

They all nod.

“You guys… You all remember G-Georgie, my brother, the way he d-d-died?" 

“He was murdered,” Stan says quietly, like he’s a little frightened by the words coming out of his own mouth. 

Eddie reaches over and takes Richie’s hand. Richie squeezes it tightly, holding on like someone’s going to come in and pull them apart.

“R-right. The anniversary of his death, the day he… I n-never went to the corner of Jackson and Witcham, I never did since I moved b-back, but this year… They found a kid. A dead kid, his fucking head in that same sewer, at that same corner, and when I went to look, I s-s-saw… There was a paper b-b-boat.” Bill turns and reaches into a bag by his seat, and he places the paper boat on the table. It’s clearly marked, right on the side, S.S. Georgie. “Georgie and I made that, the day he... d-d-died.” 

“And it was just there, on the street? This year?” Mike asks, reaching over to touch it.

Bill nods at him, in agreement and permission.

Mike picks up the boat, and offers it around. Nobody else wants to touch it.

“People die in this t-town all the time,” Bill continues. “Ben you’d always t-talk about that, about the history of the town, how many people went m-missing. So this murder wasn’t the first, but I didn’t want to tell you, call any of you until I was s-sh-sure.”

All of them are quiet. 

Finally, Stan says, “It’s that thing. The thing in the sewer.”

“The clown,” Bev says in a small voice.

And that - that’s what makes him remember. That of all things. But all of a sudden he can see it, the house on Neibolt, that day he’d been laying there with a broken arm and that thing had come out of the fridge, all twisted up, and come dancing towards him, smiling, its teeth all visible, drool dripping from its mouth. He tried to slap it, tried to push it away, but his arm was broken and he couldn’t breathe and for one clear moment at the age of 13 he had been absolutely certain he was going to die and there was nothing to stop it.

Richie’s clutching his hand so tightly his knuckles pop, and that brings him back, where all of them look harried and wide-eyed like they’ve seen a ghost. They’ve all remembered something.

“That day in Neibolt, it almost killed you, fucking Christ, Eds,” Richie’s saying next to him, and Eddie turns and puts both hands on the back of his neck, presses their foreheads together.

“It’s okay, Rich, it’s fine - you saved me, remember? Well, you and Bev.”

Bev looks over. “Right, with the fence spike. God, I was just - we were all there, that day in Neibolt. The first time we saw It together.”

It’s clear that though Eddie got his own specific dose of it, they all just got that day back - that one encounter, and how terrified they’d been.

“I kn-know that remembering doesn’t make you want to stay. I know - I know that and I’d understand if any of you, or all of you want to t-t-turn around and go h-home. You kept your oath when you showed up. If you want to leave, you can. You can go now."

Eddie turns to look at Richie again, still leaning against him, shoulder to shoulder, and Richie just looks at him. 

Mike is the first one to speak. “I’m not leaving you alone to do this, Bill. It’s killing kids again, it’s hurting people and I know you - if we all leave, you’re gonna try to do it alone. Aren’t you?”

Bill turns to Mike and nods.

“Bill you can’t! The only reason we lived that summer was because we were all together, we had to fight it together,” Bev says.

“I can’t let it keep doing this, I can’t let another kid be the new G-G-Georgie. I c-c-can’t.”

There’s a long quiet moment while they all recognize that what Bill says is true. They’re probably the only adults who remember, the only people who’ve ever tried to kill It and even come close - and if they can really kill it this time, they’ll save all the other kids that might have died by It’s hand. They’ll keep other kids from having to do it, from having to go back and try to finish the job they couldn’t. They can be the adults, now, that they’d wished for as kids.

Ben speaks up first. “I’ll stay.”

“I’ll stay, too,” Bev says. 

Eddie looks over at Richie, and he nods. “We’ll stay,” Eddie says. 

Stan is shaking his head, just in little unsteady motions. “...I don’t know. I don’t know yet. If we’re not going right now, I’d like to stay and talk and remember and we’ll figure it out. Right? We’re not going right now?”

Whatever Bill was going to say is interrupted as their waitress comes back in with their fortune cookies. She sets them out on the center of the table before turning to leave again. 

“Well, food aside, n-no I wasn’t on us planning on going now,” Bill says, and Stan smiles at him a little and shakes his head. 

They all reach for their fortune cookies almost simultaneously. Richie grabs two, one for Eddie, and everyone else gets their own. Bev breaks hers first - and that’s when all hell breaks loose. 

Blood splatters out, all over her fingers and her blouse, and she lets out a sort of squeaking little yelp as it happens. Eddie drops his then, immediately, back on the table. Ben had started to open his, and there’s something leaking from his, something that looks absolutely disgusting and smells like rotten eggs. Stan makes a quiet sound as he drops his, too, and there’s something sharp and shiny sticking out of it - something that looks an awful lot like a razorblade. 

Richie leans over and tugs Eddie close, hiding against his shoulder, and he says, quietly but with feeling, “Oh God what the fuck are we doing here.” Another glance shows that his fortune cookie, still on the table, has cracked open to reveal maggots, streaming out of it and onto the table. 

Eddie finds himself absolutely unable to scream or do anything except sit in complete silence and feel his heart pound like it’s going to explode in his chest. 

“Everybody, e-everybody stay calm, remember other people can hear you but nobody else can s-see it, not the other adults, just stay quiet, it’s not real.” 

Only Bill is still staring at his fortune cookie like he’s haunted, and there’s something sticking out of it that looks a lot like the fabric from a yellow rain slicker. 

There’s a small kind of chirping coming from the table in front of Mike, and Mike has gone completely grey. He looks like he’s going to be sick. Eddie refuses to look at whatever is on the table in front of him.

The fortune cookie in front of Eddie is just sitting there, untouched, but suddenly the sides of it start flexing in and out, moving like it’s a living, breathing creature. In fact, the breathing motion of it starts to speed up along with Eddie’s breathing.

“Can we please go? Outside?” Eddie asks, his voice sound small and reedy, just the way he knows he used to sound when he thought he was having an asthma attack.

“Yeah, nope, we’re getting the fuck out,” Richie tells him, and he pulls Eddie by the hand out of the room and out of the restaurant.

The others join them, one after the other, until Bill is the last one inside - presumably settling the bill.

“After that horror show the least he can do is buy us lunch,” Richie mutters.

“Well we can pay him back later now that none of us had a heart attack or got murdered by a fortune cookie,” Ben replies. 

Bill finally walks out, and they all just stand there in the suddenly blinding daylight, looking at him like he’ll tell them what to do next - just the way they did when they were kids. 

“I think you all need to r-remember more. I think we sh-should split up and take a walk around town to clear our h-h-heads, then meet back up tonight at the Town House.” 

For a moment, all of them look at Bill, completely taken aback. Of all of them, Mike is the one that manages to speak up. 

“No offense, Bill, but no way.” 

“W-what?” 

“I said no way, you’re not going off on your own - after everything you’ve told us? After everything you’ve been through to stay in this town? No. I’m not letting you go off on your own when that thing clearly has it out for you. You found a paper boat in the street! It killed another kid right where it killed Georgie!”

“I mean, come on, Big Bill, ever hear of the buddy system?” Richie says next to him.

Bev nods. “I agree with Mike and Richie. I don’t think we should split up.”

“B-b-but we split up that summer. We s-saw it alone, all of us.”

“We also saw it together,” Eddie reminds him. “I mean, we literally just did.”

“Have you forgotten the fucking fortune cookies already? Was that not traumatic enough for you Bill? There’s no way I’m going off alone in this town without just leaving.” Stan adds.

“Yeah, Eds and Stan are right. I will say - I mean if you wanna save time, or make it so it’s not all fucking seven of us wandering around town holding hands, we could split into smaller groups. Me and Eds obviously will not be splitting up, so we’ll go together, everybody else, you know, let’s not make anyone get picked last on the dodgeball team.” 

“I’ll go with Bill,” Mike says, shooting him a look.

“Bev and I can go together, if that’s alright, Bev?” Ben says.

Bev looks over at him, then smiles shakily and nods.

“Alright, Stan the Man, that gives you pick of all the teams. I am willing to provide things to sweeten the pot,” Richie says with a wink, and Eddie smacks him on the arm.

Stan snorts. “Yeah, you two are just as annoying as you ever were, the last thing I want to do with my few remaining hours is listen to the two of you bicker.” It’s a half a joke, and half not, Eddie can tell. There’s still something tired in Stan’s expression, something nervous behind his eyes. “I’ll go with Bill and Mike. If that’s fine.”

“Of c-course, Stan,” Bill tells him.

“All right! We’re all set, then! Goooooooo losers!” Richie bellows, sticking his hand in the middle of the little circle they’re all accidentally standing in.

Eddie reaches in and pulls his hand out and sighs.

“Babe, come on, did you really think I was going to get any less obnoxious just because we’re all about to be murdered by a monster clown?”

“Richie!”

But before Eddie can even finish telling him off, all of the other Losers, practically in unison, simultaneously say, “Beep beep, Richie.”

Richie looks deeply offended, but he’s playing it up, and everyone else is surprised into laughter. Eddie puts a hand over his mouth, but he can’t hide the fact that he’s dissolving into giggles, too, and Richie turns to him and tries to stay mad, but there’s a smile creeping up on the corners of his mouth.

These are his friends, alright. This is what he’s missed. This is why he came home, above all else.

“Alright, alright, come on, why not, hands in the middle, guys,” Mike says.

Standing there in the parking lot, they do, they all put their hands together, even as Stan rolls his eyes.

“Goooooo Losers!” Richie yells, and everyone parrots him with a slightly more reasonable, “Go Losers!” before they smile and start to break off.

Richie grabs Eddie’s hand before they even turn to walk away.

“Come on, Eds, let’s go take a terrifying walk down memory lane. Tell me where to start.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> boy i am getting this one really in right under the wire for posting once a week!!! sorry everyone!! i had a rough week last week and i have like no internet now so i have to use my phone hotspot to post but lkjasdf here it is!
> 
> please let me know if you enjoyed the chapter and i promise to post next week before the last possible moment!
> 
> thank you so much for all your enthusiasm and interest in this fic i really appreciate it!!!!


	3. walking tours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a heads up: this is a scary chapter!! i know we're literally all in a horror movie fandom, but just in case, I wanted to give a heads up. most of the trigger warnings that apply in the movie for the scare scenes apply here, and things get pretty icky in parts! if you have in particular a hang-up about like eye horror or teeth-related horror, watch out for some of that stuff.
> 
> otherwise: i hope you all enjoy this one! it's basically twice as long as the other chapters!

_I would rather not go_  
_ Back to the old house_  
_ There's too many bad memories_  
_ Too many memories there_  
  
_ When you cycled by_  
_ Here began all my dreams_  
_ The saddest thing I've ever seen_  
_ And you never knew_  
_ How much I really liked you_  
_ Because I never even told you  
Oh, and I meant to_

The Smiths, _ Back to the Old House _

We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away.  
And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.  
  
Pascal Mercier, _ Night Train to Lisbon _

* * *

It feels strange to have everyone back. Bill has spent so much time alone in Derry that now the comfort of having them all there feels almost stifling, rather than comforting. The paranoia eases up with the rest of them there, because he does feel safer with all of them there, but there’s a kind of responsibility and obligation to it, too, just like he’d felt that summer. He still feels like it should be his own burden to carry, but here they all are, back again. They promised they’d all come back, and Bill knew they needed to, but there was a reason he told them all their oath ended when they came back into town. Multiple times now he’s told them all they can leave and none of them will listen. They’d be safer that way, though - and God how he wishes he could just keep them all safe.

The memory that comes back to him, over and over, is the moment in the sewer when Pennywise had grabbed him by the throat and told the rest of them to leave - told them all he’d just take Bill and they could all go and _ thrive_. Instead, Richie had grabbed a bat and screamed “Welcome to the Losers Club, asshole,” like a battle cry, and all of them had joined in to fight It off. They were fighting for their lives, but they were fighting for Bill, too, fighting to keep him safe and refusing to just run off to their long, happy lives.

He remembers Bev’s insistence that they couldn’t just leave him there. He remembers Mike’s face in that moment, his panicked glances to everyone else, like someone might even think about leaving.

Bill wishes sometimes that they had, though. Maybe they all would have gotten out, chased away by their guilt from leaving him behind, and they wouldn’t be back here now. They never would have made the damn oath in the first place.

He knows they all look to him for some reason. He’d taken the lead that first summer because of Georgie and now he’s the one that stayed behind, so they probably expect that he’s gained some kind of secret knowledge. He doesn’t actually have any answers. He doesn’t have Ben’s fascination with the library, or his expertise - he only has the stories and the rumors he’s heard when he ventures out of his house, the things he’s seen since it all started up again, and his memories of their shared childhood. He only knows that last time they nearly beat It. Last time they came close - and now they’re older, surely they should be able to do it. Surely once they all remember, if they really can stick together, they can go in and really beat It.

It’s Stan that comes up beside Bill and nudges him, shoulder to shoulder. “Bill, c’mon. Get out of your head. Tell us where we’re going.”

He looks around, to Mike and to Stan, and realizes that they’ve been following him as he wandered, unintentionally, back towards his own home. Mike still looks determined, ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. Stan just looks a little bit scared, just blurry around the edges as he trembles, still, from the restaurant. “I-I don’t know. You guys are the ones who don’t r-remember.”

“Wow, so much for our great and fearless leader,” Stan says, almost smiling, and Bill gives him a little shove with his own shoulder.

“Yeah, alright St-Stanley, thanks for nothing. Mike?”

“Well we’re right around the corner from the crime scene, right? Should we go back while we’re here?” Mike looks serious, still - is clearly taking this more seriously, as they probably should.

Stan shivers, and Bill reaches over and squeezes his shoulder. “Might not be a b-bad idea, Mikey. Let’s start th-there.”

So the three of them set off on foot again, walking briskly past Bill’s house - only Stan stops.

He looks over at Mike, then at Bill. “Do you guys - do you guys remember that day in the garage? That time It came through the projector? We were all there, and it didn’t even matter, the pictures started flipping and it came through the screen, the whole body, head and shoulders, and It reached out and I was standing there, right in the way-”

“Until Richie pulled you out of the way, and Ben and I opened the garage door and let in the light,” Mike finishes for him. “I remember.”

Bill nods. “That was the first time we all saw it t-to-together. In the garage.”

“We used to read comics in your garage, Bill. When we were still kids. But we never went back in there after that, did we?”

“No.”

Mike looks between both of them, and then back over at the house. “This place takes the good and the bad when you go. Guess I should have listened when my grandfather told me it was cursed.”

“I don’t think any of us knew just what he meant until we felt it, though, Mike,” Stan says back.

In an unspoken agreement, their conversation ends there, and they finish making their way back to the corner of Jackson and Witcham. The crime scene tape is mostly gone, save one lone piece that flutters from a tree, waving in the wind like a beckoning hand.

Bill walks over and yanks down that one remaining piece, taking it and throwing it down into the sewer. For a moment, they all stand there, looking into it, like something is going to spring out.

Then he glances at both of them, in turn. “M-maybe we should-”

“_B-B-Billy_,” comes a voice from the sewer.

Stan freezes completely, and Bill reaches out both of his hands, an easy response. Mike takes his right, and Stan takes his left. Stan’s holding so tight it feels like Bill’s fingers are going numb.

“_Big Bill, you really think sticking together’s gonna stop me_?”

“Fuck off, you bastard,” Bill says, managing to avoid stuttering just by cursing.

A hand reaches out of the sewer then, bloated and grey and decomposing. A face starts to squeeze its way out - and Bill realizes it’s not just any face. It’s Stan’s. There’s a bandage around Its wrist, in just the right place, but this Stan, dead Stan, has one empty socket where an eye should be, and a twisted grin full of black and yellow teeth. “_You’re gonna get us all killed, Bill_.”

Bill looks over to Stan, but Stan himself looks like he’s going to be sick, and he turns and presses his face against Bill’s shoulder, just like any of them would have done when they were kids. His eyes are closed, squeezed tightly shut, like he can just block it all out.

When Bill looks back at the sewer, Stan has been joined by a dead version of Eddie, black tar streaming from his mouth, his eyes all bloodshot and yellowed with disease. His skin is covered in spots, and it looks like his nose might fall off. “_C’mon Billy, you know you can’t do it twice, you couldn’t even do it the first time. _”

Soon other hands come creeping out, arms fully reaching into the street, faces peering out of the drain, a dead version of Richie, and Ben, and Bev. Before Bill can linger though, before he can force himself to face Mike’s decomposing body or Georgie, who is surely down there, too, Mike has his arms around both Bill and Stan, and he’s yanking them back and away, pulling them, practically carrying Stan as he rushes them all away from the sewer.

“Absolutely not, we’re here to remember, not to let it fucking torture us for fun, Christ, Bill.”

“S-sorry, Mikey, I w-wasn’t-”

“God, it’s not your fault, I’m just saying let’s please get the hell out of here and get anywhere else, yeah? What do you think, Stan the Man?”

“My vote is yes, anywhere else in this town, I mean preferably out of the fucking town, but at least somewhere that is not a sewer known for its dead children, please, thanks.”

Bill chokes out a laugh at that, grabs both Stan and Mike’s hands and tugs them along, back towards Main Street, back towards an area that’s more populated.

“Well we can do that for n-now, but then someone’s gonna have to tell me wh-where else we need to g-go.”

* * *

As Bev walks, Ben follows close behind her, shuffling at a strangely respectful distance. She pauses her walking and turns to look at him. It’s funny, because even though his face is stronger now, his features more defined, in many ways he doesn’t look that different. There’s no dramatic transformation - his eyes are still kind, his smile still shy, his overall build still sturdy.

She appreciates that about him - she can look at him and still see that kid who loved New Kids on the Block and wanted so badly to impress her. He was sweet, then, and now it’s still there, under the confidence that he’s gained as he grew older. It probably doesn’t hurt now that he’s one of the most successful architects in the world. She remembers, now, seeing him on the cover of Time Magazine a few years ago, and thinking in passing that he looked familiar.

He was probably the kindest of all of them, back then, when they were kids. The most unassuming, by far. It had seemed childish to her, then, when she didn’t understand the kind of strength it took to be kind. Now that she’s older, she appreciates him a little more. She’s glad she was kind to him back then.

“Penny for your thoughts, Beverly?” Ben says, smiling as he walks up next to her.

She remembers that, too. He always used to call her Beverly. “Oh, you know. Just trying to think if I still remember any New Kids on the Block lyrics to keep you entertained while we walk.”

Ben laughs, ducking his head. “I’m never gonna live that down with you around.”

“Mm, you were the one that decided to come with me, new kid.”

“Does that work anymore when I’m not still a kid or new in town?”

“I think you’re back to being new at least, since none of us live here anymore.”

“Touché.”

He keeps his hands in his jacket pockets, but he’s walking beside her now at least, glancing over at her whenever he thinks she isn’t looking.

She knows how it feels to be watched like that, because it’s hardly new to her. Still, it seems a little different when Ben does it. A little less like he has any particular intention, a little less like he wants something and a little more like he’s just in awe of her somehow. She hadn’t felt worthy of it when they were kids, and she doesn’t really feel worthy now, either.

Kay had seen her, of course, really seen her, but she’d also looked at Bev like they were equals, because they had been. Business partners who were better off as friends than lovers, hardly a tragedy - but that’s the closest thing Bev’s ever had to this. Even Bill, when they were kids, was always a little different. He thought she was beautiful, and she knew, and he was smart and attractive and went out of his way to include her. Ben, back then, had been afraid to take that kind of initiative. He’d seemed younger somehow, while she’d felt older than she really was, and so had Bill. The two of them, she and Bill, had weathered unique tragedies, before all seven of them had shared the things they could never shake off.

After all that, the playing field had seemed a little more even.

It isn’t long, unfortunately, before they’re standing outside the old apartment building where Bev used to live with her father.

He’s long dead, and she knows that - if he were still alive, she’d be running full-tilt in the other direction and pulling Ben along with her. Still, she has a kind of morbid curiosity about the place she used to live - about the things that happened there, things she still can’t remember.

She guides Ben around to the front door and up the stairs. When they were kids, she’d always had to sneak the boys up the fire escape if they ever came to visit, just to make sure no one could see or tell her father.

When they reach the apartment, it looks occupied. There’s a little potted plant outside the door, and a welcome mat in front of it.

For a moment, the name on the door looks like it still reads MARSH - but then Bev blinks, and it clearly says KERSH. She shivers.

Ben steps up beside her, and squints at the door. “Should we knock?”

“I don’t know if I can justify bothering some innocent tenant just to see my dad’s old place.”

“Will it help you remember?”

Bev thinks about the old apartment, the musty smell of it, but if she tries to go any further than that, it’s like there’s a veil over everything - even exactly what her father did that made him so unbearable, so despicable. She doesn’t even remember how or when he died. She looks back over at Ben and nods.

He raises a hand and knocks on the door.

The door cracks open, just a hair. “Hello?”

From the sound of the voice, it’s an older woman.

Bev smiles, and reaches over to take Ben’s hand in hers. “Hi. We’re so sorry to bother you, it’s just - we grew up together here in Derry, and I used to live in this apartment. My name is Beverly Marsh? I don’t know if you-”

The door closes, abruptly, and Bev blinks at it. For a moment, a sickening feeling sweeps over her. _ Oh, I’ve heard of you Miss Marsh. And I don’t want a dirty girl like you touching my son_, Sonia Kaspbrak says in her head, and Bev squeezes her eyes shut against the unpleasant memory. Ben squeezes her hand, attempting to comfort.

Then, after the moment it takes to slide open the chain lock, the door opens completely, and a small older woman stands there, smiling. For all her wrinkles and age spots, she has a lovely, friendly sort of smile, and the apartment behind her looks clean and bright. Bev exhales with relief.

“Beverly Marsh! You know, I knew your father a little - I was sorry to hear when he passed away. I’d only ever seen him around town, but he was such a lovely man.” The woman steps back, allowing them to enter the apartment.

Bev nods, and adjusts her fingers in Ben’s grip. Her own hand is a little sweaty now, and she feels bad about it, but Ben isn’t making any moves to let go.

“You two are a lovely couple,” the woman says.

“Thank you Ms. Kersh,” Bev replies, using the name on the door. She earns another bright, white smile in response, and she holds Ben’s hand a little tighter.

When she looks over, he’s blushing, but he isn’t saying anything to blow their accidental cover, which she appreciates.

“Why don’t you two sit down? I’ll get you some tea. If either if you want to freshen up at all, the bathroom’s right down that hallway, there.”

“That hasn’t changed, at least,” Bev tells her, glancing over to see for herself. “We wouldn’t want to impose, though.”

“Oh, please, dear! I never get any visitors, all my grandchildren have moved away - indulge an old woman her kindnesses, won’t you?”

Only Bev’s starting to tune out, on accident, because there’s something about the bathroom - something brushing at the edge of her memory. For a moment, it looks almost red in the light from the window, but then she blinks and it’s all back to normal again.

“I’ll be right back,” she says to Ben. Her hand slips out of his, and he gives her a wide-eyed sort of look. It’s the kind of look that says _ what the fuck are you doing, don’t abandon me here _, but Bev just gives him a little smile, and he closes his eyes and sighs and leans his head back against the couch, clearly out of exasperation.

She laughs, quietly, and he opens one eye just to watch her.

Then, she goes down the hallway and into the bathroom.

Suddenly, she realizes the reason it looked red is because the decor is actually pink. The entire bathroom is a strange shade of faded pink - the sink, the bathtub, all the decorations. Pink almost like-

_ Blood. Blood everywhere, all over everything, in her hair and her mouth and her face and- _

Bev gasps, coming back to herself. Her hands are clenched around the edge of the sink, her knuckles white. She remembers now - she remembers how the blood had come pouring out of the drain, how all the little tendrils of hair, her own discarded hair, had come whipping out of the sink, too, dragging her down, pulling her in. And now - now even though the boys had helped her clean it up, Eddie with his inhaler firmly between his teeth, Ben with his too-big gloves and a mop - now it looks like this same bathroom was almost permanently stained by the blood her father could never see.

Running some cold water into her hands, Bev splashes a little on her face and the back of her neck. She feels overheated, suddenly. Jittery.

She closes her eyes, just for a moment, until there’s a knock on the door, three firm taps.

“Yeah?”

“Bev, the tea’s ready.” It’s Ben. Thank God.

Bev opens the door and pulls him into a hug, just for a moment. “I remember. The time you cleaned my bathroom. You and all the guys.”

“I remembered, too.”

She pulls back, and looks at him. He looks really truly nervous for the first time since they left the restaurant. Even then, he seemed to recover quickly - but there’s something about this he doesn’t like. To be fair, Bev doesn’t either. The way all their memories have faded, there’s something slippery and truly unsettling about it. A monster is one thing - but the way they were all affected by It, the way It followed them out of Derry - that’s the scariest part, sometimes.

Ben takes her hand again, and they’re walking back out to the living room, but Bev glances back into the bathroom. She remembers, then, she’d been reading something that day - a postcard, with a poem on it, that someone had sent her or given her. _ Your hair is winter fire. January Embers. My heart burns there too. _She’d thought maybe it was Bill, but that day they cleaned her bathroom, he hadn’t known what she meant. Who had it been? She can’t remember anymore.

When they’re back to the couch, they sit down together, and Ms. Kersh has little cups and saucers waiting on the table in front of them. She raises her own, gives them a little toasting motion, and they each pick up their cup, too.

Ms. Kersh is the first to drink - and she slurps at her tea, making noises Bev never would have expected and that she wishes now she hadn’t heard. There’s something wrong about it. The air feels like it’s shifted, the same way it did in the Chinese restaurant.

Ben lifts his own cup, but then drops it suddenly, startling Bev into dropping hers, too. When she looks down, the liquid spilling from her cup is thick and red and it looks just like blood.

She gasps, and looks up at Ms. Kersh.

The woman’s eyes, which had been a friendly blue, are suddenly yellow and orange and strange. She smiles, a big twisted kind of smile, and her teeth are all yellow and rotten, too, just like her eyes, which almost look like they’re melting, leaking from their sockets. Then, as she smiles even wider, her teeth start to fall out, one by one and then steadily faster, plinking onto the saucer in front of her.

“_Something wrong_?”

Ben yells, something short and quickly cut off. When Bev looks over, his eyes are closed, and he’s clapped a hand over them.

Bev looks back to the woman, but she’s kneeling on the ground now, trying fruitlessly to gather the liquid back into one of the cups, covering her hands in blood in the process.

“_You know, Bevvie_,” It says, and suddenly that’s her father’s voice, all twisted and growling but just like her father, just like her father on his very worst days. “_I always knew you’d turn out rotten. I always knew you were a dirty slut. First you bring boys back, then you go running around with girls and boys, whoever you want, catching anything anyone’ll give you. I told you, Bevvie. I warned you. Does he even know what he’s in for? Getting anywhere near you? You’re just a dirty, filthy whore, Bevvie, and everybody in the damn town knew it, even me._”

It tilts Its head up, then, and there still in the woman’s dress and with her hair, is her father. His eyes are all gone, all melted out, and he doesn’t have any teeth, his skin is all grey and rotten and cracking, but that’s her father’s face in all that, and she recognizes it straightaway.

She has an inexplicable nervous urge to apologize.

Then Ben pulls her up, suddenly, and pulls her towards the door. “Bev, come on, we have to go! It isn’t real!”

She lets him pull her, but then she turns and her father is still following them. He looks real.

Bev lets go of Ben’s hand, and goes back to face her father. She remembers, suddenly - she was the one that hit her father with the porcelain lid of their toilet. It had shattered over his head. Now, she stands there, looking at her father’s decaying face, and she brings her leg up and knees him directly in the crotch.

It doubles over and howls, but then It laughs.

Ben grabs her again and tugs her along. They’re running down the fire escape, then, out the back way she always used to sneak them in, and then they’re away from the building and back to Main Street, and Bev can still hear that laughter ringing in her ears.

When she looks back, one last time, the building, the old apartment building, is little more than a pile of rotting wooden boards and busted glass - it looks like no one’s been inside of it in years.

* * *

It’s easy, out in the bright daylight so much like their childhood summers, to forget about all the fucked up shit that just happened with the fortune cookies. It’s easy for Richie to drag Eddie along by the hand and crack jokes and watch him smile in spite of himself.

“You know with Bill, Mike, and Stan having an additional trauma to relive, we probably have some cushion time. So I’d like to propose crossing something off my own personal bucket list, which is that I always wanted to make out with you in the balcony at the Capitol.”

Eddie blushes, pulled up short, and blinks at Richie. For a second, Richie is reminded of the way he’d do anything when they were kids to get Eddie to blush like that. He’d flirt and say whatever stupid shit came into his head just to watch the way the flush spread across Eddie’s nose, right over his freckles. “Rich, I don’t think we have time for a movie,” Eddie protests, but it sounds sort of weak.

Richie grins at him. “Bet we do. Bet at the very least we have time for like, part of a movie we’re not even really paying attention to.” He leans in and kisses Eddie’s cheek, and Eddie shoves at him.

“Oh my God, stop, you’re such an asshole, you are not - I am not letting you drag me into a movie to make out when we’re supposed to be uncovering our repressed memories!”

“Okay, but you do realize how much time we spent at the Capitol right? Me specifically, but also you. I bet we’d remember stuff if we went in!”

Eddie narrows his eyes and gives Richie a little huff. _ Cute, cute, cute _. “I hate it when you’re right. I hate it when you are, in fact, actually smart and logical and shit it is just the fucking worst and I really want you to know that.”

With a grin, Richie leans down to kiss him, but Eddie puts a hand on his chest to hold him off.

“Rich, I- you know I normally would never but we are literally in Derry on Main Street, and I’m a little…”

“Oh.” Richie steps back, and looks around. No one’s looking right this second, but unfortunately, Eddie has a point. It’s been so long, he’s lived in LA and New York and he and Eddie are always fine in New York, in gay bars or around other people who know he’s out. But here… Here where they both learned to be afraid of themselves, it might actually still be dangerous for them to be too visible. “Shit. Sorry, Eds.”

“No, don’t- Oh, fuck it.” And with that, Eddie pulls him down and kisses him anyways, just something quick, before tugging him along by the hand. “Never mind, that would be stupid, there are worse things to be afraid of in this shitty town and I am not reverting to that just because we’re here.”

Following after Eddie, Richie gives the back of his head a look that he knows must make him absolutely obvious, if anyone were looking. Eddie just does this to him - makes him a fucking lovesick idiot, makes him want to write songs, write poems, make grand gestures and declarations. “God if I wasn’t already engaged to you I’d propose again,” he says.

“Stop it,” Eddie says, and Richie can practically hear him blushing - it’s glorious.

They make it to the Capitol and find that they’ve only just missed the beginning of the new Ghostbusters movie. Apparently the only way the Capitol has managed to stay in business is that their admission prices have stayed low, and they no longer play first run films. Ghostbusters has been out for a couple of months.

Richie buys their tickets and they head inside. “I’ll have to tell Kate we’re supporting her film career.”

“I’m not making out while she’s onscreen.”

“Oh, c'mon babe, just consider it wedding practice!”

They’re walking into the atrium when Richie realizes there’s still an arcade to be found there. A couple of the machines are completely broken, but the old Street Fighter machine is still there, and the buttons probably only stick a little bit. Richie goes over and presses them just to see - in fact the whole thing feels just the same - shitty as ever, to be fair, barely maintained, but he used to be an expert in how to make those buttons do his bidding.

“Holy shit,” he whispers under his breath with a smile.

“Obviously this was a terrible idea,” Eddie says, walking up behind him. “I’m losing you to the arcade machines.”

Richie turns to argue with him, and spots the photo booth, still sitting there behind Eddie. “Holy shit!” 

He grabs Eddie’s hand, but Eddie turns and beats him inside, pulling him inside instead, smiling. “Do you remember-”

“All the times we used to come in here as kids? You always beat me in here.”

“Mm,” Eddie smiles and pulls Richie close, arms around his neck. “Me? Coming up with flimsy excuses to be close to you? Imagine that.”

“Aw, Eds, you had a crush on me-”

“Oh, don’t you even start with that, it was barely funny the first time you said it,” Eddie replies, but he’s smiling indulgently, still running his fingers up and down the nape of Richie’s neck and making him shiver.

“Did you just come in here with me to make out?” Richie asks him, leaning down and brushing his lips against Eddie’s just close enough to tease.

Eddie shakes his head, brushing his nose against Richie’s. “This was definitely your idea.”

Reaching over, Richie flails for the little photo booth buttons, trying to get it started. “Here come here.” He sits down, and tugs Eddie into his lap. Eddie comes easily, tumbling down and giggling as he does, shifting around until he’s situated with his arm over Richie’s shoulders.

The camera goes off while Eddie is still laughing, still getting his arms positioned. Seemingly as retaliation, he puts a hand on Richie’s face and pulls him into a kiss, making him tilt his head up now that Eddie is the one with the height advantage. The camera goes off again. Richie pulls back laughing and Eddie goes after him again, trying to pull at Richie’s face and force him into some stupid expression. Richie turns to the camera and makes his own dumb face while Eddie’s still giggling at him. Another flash. Richie turns his head, then, and presses kisses against Eddie’s neck, making him squirm as the last picture gets taken.

“Asshole,” Eddie says, but he’s still laughing.

“Says the one trying to make me look like an idiot.”

“You don’t need my help to make you look like an idiot, sweetheart.”

“I set you up for that, that is not your joke.”

Eddie grins and stands up, pulling Richie along again. “Come on, I wanna see our pictures.”

They go around to the side and Richie pulls their photo strip out of the little printer box. They’re small and still in black and white, but they’ve turned out just as good as they felt when they were in the booth. Eddie’s smiling and laughing in almost all of them, and their one proper kiss looks intimate and perfect. It’s practically wedding photo material. Richie tilts it to show it to Eddie, who smiles too.

“Well we’ve definitely crossed something off my bucket list, actually kissing you in that photo booth. That was half of what I thought about when I was 14. You wanna go see how crowded this theater is so I can decide if I’ll make out with you in the balcony?”

Richie grins and wraps an arm around Eddie as they finally make their way towards the stairs.

He glances back over his shoulder to the Street Fighter machine and blows it a kiss. “I’ll come back for you, baby.”

“I can’t believe my fiancé is leaving me for an arcade machine,” Eddie whispers as they stumble up the dimly lit staircase together.

When they were all kids, the Losers had haunted the balcony, together or in smaller groups. It was also where some of the older kids went to make out, but it was the safest way to go and see something at the Capitol without risking running into Bowers, who was also a regular fixture there in the downstairs seats. Richie and Eddie particularly had a tendency to go to the movies with or without the others, and had one spot in the front center row of the balcony where they spent most of their time.

As it turns out, when they reach the top of the stairs, there’s a little velvet rope there to discourage anyone from sitting up in the balcony anymore. Richie scoffs and steps over it, and Eddie follows him.

It’s hard to see in the dark theater, but it looks like they’re the only ones in the screening.

Richie turns to Eddie and waggles his eyebrows.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “You’re so embarrassing, it is embarrassing to be around you, how are you literally now a famous comedian?”

“God, you sound just like the day we met for a second time. You’re such an old romantic.”

They’re both still whispering a little out of habit, but Richie sits right in their old spot and puts up the armrest so he can pull Eddie close to him. There’s something wrong with the seat, though, it feels - oddly lumpy. Richie slides over and just pulls Eddie into his lap again, electing to ignore the undeniable problems of an old theater.

Eddie wrinkles his nose. “It looks like they haven’t cleaned this balcony since 1989.”

“Yeah, hey, look, I think we dropped that popcorn there when we saw the original Ghostbusters.”

That makes Eddie laugh, and he snorts as he leans forward, pressing his forehead against Richie’s temple. “God you’re-” He pulls back, then, abruptly. He almost loses his balance before he grabs onto Richie’s shoulders. “Oh my god, that time we watched Ghostbusters together like the week we met. Do you remember that? I said I almost remembered - I remembered watching it here, with you and Bill and Stan, I just didn’t realize it was you. God, what the fuck.”

Eddie’s breathing picks up a little, so Richie rubs a hand up and down his back. What a terrifying thing to constantly be reminded of - they turned out okay in the end, of course, but being here is a constant reminder of all they forgot. Almost dates at the Capitol, time spent together at the quarry, all the touchstones of the teenage romance they didn’t quite have, cut short because they moved away and just forgot each other. And how do you forget the person you loved most in the world without competition or expectation? Just because the two of you were fucking unlucky enough to grow up in a cursed hellhole, apparently.

Eddie leans forward and presses his face against Richie’s shoulder and shudders. “This is so fucked up, I hate this.”

“It’s not my favorite, either, Eds.” Richie turns his head and ducks down a little, places his fingers under Eddie’s chin. “Hey, come here. Look at me. We’re okay. Just breathe, Eds.”

With an annoyed little frown, Eddie surges forward and kisses Richie. It’s just like the kiss outside, hard and a little defiant, but this time Eddie lingers. He shifts in Richie’s lap to get a better angle, brings both his hands up into Richie’s hair, and kisses long and slow. They break apart, Richie breathing heavy, but Eddie leans in again and licks his way into Richie’s mouth, and Richie’s still so weak for that. He makes a whiny little noise and grabs at Eddie’s hips, pulling him closer.

When Eddie does pull back properly, his pupils are big in the dark theater, and his face is all flushed. God, Richie would do anything for him, come back to this town, fight the fucking sewer clown again, he’d do any of it all over again just for this.

Then, unfortunately, Richie manages to glance behind Eddie at the screen, for the first time since they really sat down.

What he sees makes him clutch Eddie tighter, pull him close and tuck Eddie’s head under his chin where he’s safe and tucked away and not looking at the screen. “Oh God, Eddie, baby, don’t look.”

“Wh- Rich, is this like a bit? It’s Ghostbusters, it’s not-”

But the trouble is, it isn’t Ghostbusters. Richie doesn’t have any fucking words for what it is. It’s poorly filmed and framed, shot like a shitty horror movie, but one that’s so poorly shot it ends up looking real, like a snuff film out of anybody’s worst nightmares. This is specifically Richie’s nightmare, though, because it’s footage, somehow, of himself and Eddie on the street in front of the theater, only they’re both bloodied and beaten, like somebody saw, and somebody got to them. Like Eddie was right to pull away.

The Eddie onscreen turns his head and grins right at Richie, right at the camera, his teeth all full of blood. “_Oh Richie, I told you not to kiss me._”

Only then that Eddie leans in and bites screen-Richie’s nose clean off, and Richie turns his head, fighting the urge to gag.

Eddie’s wheezing now, in Richie’s lap, there’s a little whistle in his gasp, and he says, “Richie, what the fuck was that, what is that, what the fuck is happening?”

“It’s-”

He gets cut off, though, as the Richie onscreen turns to the camera. “_Oh Eds, Eddie baby, it’s just your very worst fucking nightmare come to life! Welcome to Derry, where every little queer can get his kicks! Why won’t you look at me, Eddie? _”

Eddie curls up, then, still breathing heavy, still not looking at the screen, shaking his head.

Finding whatever bravery he does have, whatever he’s got left in his body from that summer or otherwise, Richie picks Eddie up and runs for his life, getting them both down the stairs and out through the emergency exit, out into the alleyway right by the Capitol. Richie’s breathing heavy, too, by the time he leans Eddie up against the wall and keeps him there, pressing him against the bricks like it might protect him.

“Eds, Eds we’re safe, it’s gone, hey, look at me.”

Eddie opens his eyes, and carefully starts to hold his own weight, putting his legs on the ground. He stares up at Richie like he’s taking in every detail of his face, like he’s looking for something.

“That-” Eddie has to pause, still gasping. “That summer you told us all you were afraid of clowns. But you weren’t, were you?”

Richie shakes his head. “No, it- That wasn’t what I saw.”

And it’s only as he’s saying it that he remembers, but boy does he remember now, remember what he saw and why he saw it and now he wishes he could forget again, just leave it all behind like he did when he left.

“Rich. What was it?”

“The missing poster - after the missing poster, it was a coffin upstairs, with a version of me in it. A dead version of me, with my mouth sewn shut, and then - Then Bill and I saw you, it looked like you but you were dead, and there was all this shit coming out of your mouth, and you asked if I wanted to play hide and seek, and you started-”

Eddie puts a hand on the back of Richie’s neck and presses their foreheads together, holding him close. “Rich. Richie, it’s okay. I’m here. I’ve got you. I’m fine, and you’re fine, and we’re gonna - we’re gonna be fine.”

Richie closes his eyes, and feels like maybe Eddie’s right.

Then his eyes start to hurt - hurt like someone’s practically stabbing him, hurt like both of his contacts are on inside out or torn or something else that shouldn’t be fucking possible when he’s had them in all day.

“Oh, God, what the fuck.” Richie pulls back and puts his fingers over his eyes, pressing on them, but it doesn’t help. God, it hurts so fucking bad.

“Rich, is it your contacts?”

Richie nods, because he doesn’t know what else it could be.

Eddie kneels down, in front of where Richie’s doubled over, in the middle of a dirty fucking alleyway, and he helps Richie take out his contacts.

There’s an immediate relief. Richie sighs, and leans down to press his face against Eddie’s shoulder, taking comfort while he can.

“Guess we should go get my glasses before you get your turn on the trauma tram.”

“Don’t - please don’t be funny right now.”

“Beep beep?” Richie asks.

“No, that’s - I don’t know. You’re right, let’s go get your glasses.”

* * *

Mike, Stan, and Bill make their way down Main Street in Derry, taking comfort in the handful of people wandering the street. Everything seems normal here - properly in place. The Capitol’s still there, and so is the pharmacy and the old butcher shop where Mike used to deliver meat.

He pauses right in front of the alleyway for a moment and turns to Stan and Bill. “That was the first place I saw It. Right down that alleyway. It- you remember I told you guys what happened to my parents? That was what it used against me. Their hands… beating on the door.”

Stan shivers, and Bill walks over to pat Mike on the shoulder.

“It’s okay, M-Mikey. We’re gonna get It this time.”

“I hope you’re right.”

As they continue to walk, something in a pawn shop window catches Mike’s eye. He pauses, and Bill bumps into him.

Stan is actually the one who says it. “Bill, isn’t that Silver?”

They all stand there, then, and squint at it - and it absolutely is. Bill laughs, loud and happy, and Mike turns to watch him with a smile on his face. He hasn’t heard Bill laugh like that since they got here, not even at the restaurant.

“Let’s go in there and see what they want for it.”

So the three of them crowd into the shop, and talk to the owner. He tries to charge them through the nose for the thing - says vintage bikes are in now or something, so Mike steps in and pays for it, waving Bill off as he tries to get it on his own.

“Good luck fitting three grown men on that bike,” the owner says as they leave.

“I think we’ll manage,” Stan bites back.

They get the bike out to the street, and then they really don’t know what to do with it. They can’t go back to Bill’s place, not now, not after what already happened so nearby. There’s not really anywhere convenient to put it.

“You wanna take it out to my grandfather’s farm? You can see if she still rides.” Mike offers. Some part of him wonders if the old place is even still there. He never could manage to sell it, so without any kind of interference or sabotage, it should still just be falling apart in silence on the edge of Derry.

As they get out of town, out where the roads are a little quieter, Bill hops on Silver and starts trying to ride. When he leans to one side, Stan nudges him a little, and if he leans to the other, Mike swoops in to right him instead. They all have a little bit of fun, tilting the bike back and forth as Bill wobbles and laughs.

Stan’s smiling, too, which is nice. Mike’s glad to see him happy, and a little less haunted, if only for a moment.

When they make it out to the farm, it turns out it is still standing. The old farm house is there, not even looking that much worse for wear. The barn and the other buildings are looking a little rotten and a little worn down, but nothing has completely collapsed, and Mike doesn’t see any graffiti or anything too awful.

“Place looks better than I thought it would,” Mike says.

“Well. M-maybe I kept an eye on it,” Bill tells him, glancing over as he climbs off of Silver. He looks a little embarrassed, like maybe he didn’t mean for Mike to find out. It’s a pleasant kind of surprise, and it sends a little thrill through Mike. He smiles.

“Thanks, Bill.” It comes out softer than he intended, and he tries to cover it by grabbing Bill’s shoulder and squeezing it a little.

“Is there a reason we came out here?” Stan asks.

Mike turns to him and chuckles. “Oh, I don’t know. I just- I spent a lot of time out here. Got homeschooled, worked all the time. You were all in town or at school together, but I didn’t have much of that.”

“W-was it your grandfather that t-taught you?”

Nodding, Mike glances back over at the house. “He was a real stickler for me getting my work done, but he was smart, too. He knew a lot about the history of this place. He used to send me on these little field trips, have me go to notorious places in Derry history. That alleyway where the Bradley Gang massacre happened. The old ironworks factory. The place where The Black Spot used to be. My grandfather - he knew people that died in that fire.”

“Probably why he knew the town was cursed, then,” Stan says.

Mike shrugs. “That or he just knew there were a whole lot of racists in it. Then again, those two things don’t really cancel each other out. It seems like - seems like one of the reasons It’s here is that It feeds on hate like that. And Derry has plenty of it.”

“You can s-say that again.”

Turning again, Mike looks over at the building where they used to keep the sheep. The building where his grandfather first taught him to use a bolt gun. At the time, Mike had resented it, in retrospect he still hates that he ever had to kill an animal, but he understands now what his grandfather was trying to tell him. He understood, really, the day Henry Bowers put that same bolt gun between his eyes.

“What ever happened to Henry Bowers?” Mike wonders out loud.

Stan looks to Bill, as does Mike, because they know if anyone has the answer, it’s him.

“He’s s-still up in Juniper Hill,” Bill tells them.

“The state hospital?” Stan asks.

Bill nods. “R-remember? They pinned the whole thing on him when it h-happened. Said he k-killed all the kids.”

“And nobody would have believed us if we told them the truth,” Mike adds.

Mike wanders slowly towards the old barn. The sheep stalls are still standing, and the tools are inside, most of them rusting away. He finds, though, buried under a blanket, an old bolt gun that must have been protected from the elements. He wipes it off with his shirt, cocks it, and points it at the wall to shoot it. The mechanism still works. There’s ammo, too, that was under the blanket, and Mike slings it over his shoulder.

“Hey, look what I found!” he calls out to Stan and Bill as he walks back out.

They look over, and Bill raises his eyebrows. “That’s what we used the f-first time.”

“This and anything we found down there, yeah,” Mike says, turning over the gun in his hands. “I brought the ammo last time, too, but it fell down the well with Henry, after he tried to kill me.”

Stan gasps a little, and Mike looks over to him, then around, expecting to see It again. Instead, it’s just Stan, staring into the distance. “That was when I got separated down there. While Henry was still after you.”

Bill goes over and puts an arm around Stan, so Mike does too.

“Hey. Don’t worry about that right now,” Mike tells him.

“I- yeah. Okay.” Stan looks over, but then he looks off again, staring at nothing. He’s always been hard to read. It’s true that Mike hasn’t known him as long as Bill and Eddie and Richie all did, but he still feels like Stan keeps a lot of himself locked away.

They’re all heading back towards the road when Mike hears it. It's bleating, coming from the barn, but it sounds… wrong. Really, truly wrong.

Mike knows he sold all the animals before he left town. He knows it can’t actually be a sheep left here somewhere.

“Can you guys hear that?” he asks them.

Stan looks over at him, wide-eyed, and nods. Bill pauses for a moment, then freezes completely when the sound rings out again.

“We should go.” Stan says.

The problem is, Mike just can’t. He has to check. If it is an animal, he has to make sure it isn’t hurt. If it’s not an animal - well. Stan can ride double with Bill as an apology, and Mike can run behind them, and they’ll all get the hell out.

Still, Mike walks toward the barn, and Bill goes with him. Stan comes along, probably because he knows that none of them need to be left anywhere alone right now.

Inside the barn, the bleating is louder. It’s coming from the last stall.

Mike approaches quietly. Hesitantly, like that will keep him safe, or just like he’s trying not to spook whatever animal it is. Even he isn’t sure which it is.

Lying on the ground in the stall, Mike finds a sheep - but it’s already dead, or it should be. It’s cut open, all its viscera on gruesome, vivid display. Mike stumbles back from it, bumping into Bill and Stan, who reach out and grab him.

“_You need to start taking more responsibility around here Mike_,” says the sheep, in his grandfather’s voice.

Mike turns, then, grabs Bill and Stan, and runs for his life.

They get back to Silver, and all three of them end up piling on, Stan riding on the handlebars while Bill and Mike ride double. Bill pedals so fast it feels like nothing could possibly catch them, not even It, not even if It tried to chase them.

Once they hit a hill, the bike pitches to one side, and they all go tumbling off into the grass, still breathing heavy.

Bill is the first one of them to laugh, but then Stan breaks, and Mike can’t help himself, so he ends up laughing, too. Then they’re just three forty year old men, covered in grass stains, still shaking a little, but laughing so hard they might cry, sitting on the ground. For that moment, Mike feels safe again.

* * *

As soon as they’re well away from the old apartment building, Ben lets go of Bev’s hand. He feels guilty, holding onto it when he doesn’t need to, like he’s using everything going on as an excuse to touch her. He’s trying not to.

When they were kids, Ben felt sometimes like he’d loved Bev simply because she was one of the only people in town who’d ever been nice to him, and because she was beautiful.

Now, though, he’s starting to see things he couldn’t as a kid, and it’s only making all those feelings worse, when they never fully went away, because he only forgot them - and now they’re back.

Bev is strong - maybe stronger than all of them. She’d taken a fence spike to Pennywise in the house on Neibolt Street while all the rest of them were still terrified. Just now, even while It took the form of her father, spewed all her worst thoughts about herself, Bev faced It head on and kicked it in the crotch. She’s still funny, and casually confident, and cool in a way that Ben feels like he will never, ever be.

And her hair - still as red and curly as ever, and still cut short, falling just below her ears. It still suits her.

He stops when he realizes he doesn’t really know where he’s going.

She catches up and places a hand on his shoulder.

“You okay?”

Ben looks over at her, his brow furrowed. “You just saw your dead father, and you’re asking if I’m okay?”

At that, Bev smiles, and then breaks out into a little laugh. “Yeah, actually. I had to live with my dad for years, and trust me, he deserved it. It was all very cathartic. I didn’t really mean for you to have to see all of that, though. I thought we’d just be… remembering. I didn’t know you’d be getting a tour through my tragic childhood trauma.”

Sighing, Ben places his hand over hers. “I remember… when we all fought it, down there. Under Neibolt. I remembered while we were in there that for you, it turned into your dad.”

Bev looks down, then nods. “Yeah. Well. He scared the shit out of me. Obviously he still does, a little. No way around that. And you know the worst- No, sorry, you don’t need to know all that.”

Ben tilts his head, trying to make eye contact again. “Hey, Beverly, it’s okay. You can tell me.”

She looks up at him. “I married a guy just like him. We got a divorce, I’ve got a restraining order, but he- he did the same things to me my dad used to do. I could blame it on not remembering, but it still… I feel like such an idiot, Ben. Every time I think about it. If Kay hadn’t been there for me and helped me leave, I’d probably still be with him.”

Unable to stop himself, Ben pulls her into a hug. She hugs him back, easily, and sighs against his shoulder.

“You’re not an idiot, Beverly. And you’re still the bravest out of all of us. You have to know that.”

“Thanks, Ben.” She steps back, but this time as they walk, she takes his hand again. “Now tell me all your shitty childhood trauma to make me feel better, huh?”

Ben laughs, and she smiles back at him. “Guess we’d better go to the library, then,” he tells her.

The Derry Library, as it turns out, has changed very little. The front room is still lit primarily by those big open windows - the same ones Ben used to watch through, used to see Bill and Richie and Eddie and Stan ride in front of, before he’d ever met them. He takes Bev to the table he always sat at, because it’s empty this late in the afternoon on a weekday.

She sits next to him, rather than across from him. Ben leans close to whisper to her. “I used to come here by myself. Before I met you and the guys I didn’t have any friends in town. Like you said - everyone called me new kid. No one even knew who I was. I just came here and read. I read everything I could get my hands on, mostly stuff about the history of Derry. I used to see the guys biking down the street and wish I could do the same thing. Then that day Henry Bowers caught up to me, I finally met them.” Ben thinks about Bowers, and shudders. “I used to come in here to hide from him, too.”

Bev puts a hand on his arm, rubbing a little. “I used to feel like I didn’t have any friends. Not until I met you guys. Nobody at that school liked me, except you and the other Losers. I thought everyone in town believed those rumors about me - but you never did, did you?”

Ben shakes his head. He feels 13 again in that moment, trying to prove to her somehow that he always thought the things Bowers said were bullshit - but he really had. “No, never. I- uh, well. I guess you know, after I told you in the sewer, but. That day before Bowers caught me - I was sitting here at this table, writing that poem I sent you. Your hair is winter fire…”

“January embers,” Bev whispers, smiling at him. “Ben, it was such a beautiful poem. I forgot it was you, but you’re right.”

“...You thought it was Bill.”

“At first, back then.” She looks down at the table, bites her lip. “He seemed... older. After Georgie died, probably. Things can do that to you, things like that. Growing up with my dad, losing my mom, that made me feel older, too. I assumed that meant something. But you didn’t have that until we all did - I think we all did, after. None of us were ever really kids again, after the sewer.”

“Yeah. I think you’re right.”

“I’m glad you got to be a kid for a while, though, Ben. There’s nothing wrong with that.” She reaches down and takes his hand, gently intertwining their fingers.

Very suddenly, then, something shakes loose in his head, and he remembers the other thing that had happened that day in the library. He’d been reading _ A History of Old Derry_, and then the pictures had gone funny. The balloon had shown up, then the eggs… Then that headless boy, and the clown. That’s what had chased Ben right out into Henry Bowers’ arms.

He shivers, just barely, but Bev catches it and raises her eyebrows.

“I saw It here. That same day.”

“Hell of a day,” she says with a little smirk.

He shakes his head, pressing his lips together to try and avoid laughing out loud.

The librarian shows up beside them without warning, and Ben only sees her out of the corner of his eye as he jumps. It looks like the same woman it was when Ben was a kid - she’s older now, and a little scary, but Ben was a little scared of her even when he was younger.

She holds her hand up, giving them a shushing motion.

Ben quietly, says, “Sorry,” more breath than word.

The librarian just narrows her eyes and then leaves again. Bev quietly giggles next to him.

He’s still on edge, though, when the voice rings out.

“_Hey, tits_!”

When he looks over, there’s teenage Henry Bowers, only he’s wearing a clown suit. He’s got a grin on his face that’s just a little too big, not quite right for his face. There’s blood, running down his forehead, just like that day he’d caught up to them at Neibolt.

“_I never finished carving my name, tits. Or maybe I should finish it on Bevvie, there_. _ Bet she’d appreciate it. Bet she’d be more grateful than you were._”

“It can’t be,” Bev says next to him, and the librarian shushes them again.

Ben stands up, pulling Bev with him, nearly stumbling over his chair in the process.

“_You can run, tits, but you won’t get away from me again. Not this time. This time I’m gonna catch up to you, and I’m gonna finish the fucking job. Henry Bowers, the dancing clown. I guess if I run out of room, I’ll find somewhere to put it. Maybe your face. Maybe I’ll just slit your fucking throat, tits_.”

As Ben tries to go for the door, though, he realizes there are balloons, floating down from the ceiling. He looks up, frozen in horror, as almost a hundred balloons come bouncing down, like they were all stored up there in a net, like they would be above a concert or something.

Nobody else, not even the librarian, seems to notice what’s happening.

There’s an old woman looking at the reference shelves, and a balloon floats down right in front of her face, and then pops, loudly and violently. It splatters her with blood, and she doesn’t even flinch. Ben watches it happen, and he can feel himself starting to shake.

Another balloon floats down, right in front of him, and there’s a print on it that says YOU’LL DIE IF YOU TRY. Ben barely finishes reading it before the balloon pops.

Then, he and Bev are both splattered with blood - covered in it as it comes flying out of the popped balloon. Then all the balloons start popping, one after the other, most of them close enough to keep splattering both of them with more and more blood until they’re practically drenched.

Henry Bowers, It, is laughing, and now it’s the clown’s wild, deranged laugh, and Bev screams. As the sound rings out in the library, everyone turns to look at them.

She’s the one that finally manages to run, tugging Ben along this time as they both scramble from the table, out towards the door and then back out into the street, but now they don’t stop. They won’t stop again, probably, because they both remember more than enough, and now they’ll need to clean up - they’re just heading right for the Town House.

* * *

Eddie sticks close to Richie as they walk back to the Town House, a little worried about Richie wandering around without his contacts in, but not as worried as he’d been when Richie had doubled over in the alleyway, looking like he wanted to claw his own eyes out. That had been more disturbing than whatever they’d heard in the theater.

Presumably Richie had seen something - something related to the same kind of thing he’d seen when they were kids. The idea that Richie had been afraid of what might happen to him - to both of them - is haunting to Eddie. How had they never talked about it? But it was the same way Eddie had never said anything to any of the Losers about how he felt or exactly why he was afraid of what he’d seen. He’d been terrified, to his core, by the things his mother had told him and by the things Henry Bowers had called them. It must have been the same way for Richie.

“Do you want to talk about what you saw in the theater?” Eddie asks Richie, still guiding him by the hand.

“Not really, Eds. Just. Suffice it to say it was bad. Real fucking bad.”

They make it to the Town House, and Eddie tries to get Richie to wait while Eddie goes to get his glasses, but Richie holds tightly to Eddie’s hand and refuses to let go. Maybe that’s fair after they’ve already seen It, even sticking together. God knows what might have happened if they’d actually all split up.

Once Richie does have his glasses back, he and Eddie sit down on their bed in the Town House, just for a moment, and Eddie pulls Richie close, looking at his face with his glasses on.

“Have I ever mentioned how much I like you in glasses?” Eddie asks. It’s genuine, but it’s also a convenient distraction, a way to try and make them both forget about what they’ve already seen.

Richie huffs out a laugh and raises his eyebrows. “Really? This does it for you? My complete inability to see?”

“No, asshole.” Eddie shakes Richie a little by the shoulders. “I just - the first time I saw you I thought you should be wearing glasses. I sort of missed them. It makes you look like… you. Reminds me of when we were kids.”

“Aw, you really do like me.”

“Well, for better or worse and all that.”

Richie gives him the softest little smile at that, one of those unbearable fond little looks that he gives Eddie sometimes, like he can’t believe they’re really here and getting married someday soon. To be fair, Eddie can’t believe it either. He leans in and kisses Richie, just a brief peck, and then he presses a kiss to Richie’s forehead, too, which he can do because they’re sitting down.

“Guess we should go hunt down more of your repressed memories, right, Eds?”

Eddie tenses up at that, and his breathing picks up again. He knows, now, has known for years that it’s just an anxiety attack, but something about being back here makes him wish he had his inhaler. “I guess so. I don’t know where we’d go, though, for me - I really don’t want to go to the hospital-”

“What about your old house?”

And something about that - something about the idea of going to that place where he grew up, another place where his mother had trapped him, the place where she’d first put him on meds and tried to lock him away from his friends.

_ Sweetie, you can’t go, you’re getting over your sickness, remember? _

Richie, suddenly, is grabbing his shoulders, and telling him to breathe, and Eddie is gasping and gasping and for some reason, he can’t seem to get enough air into his lungs, and he’s trying to remember all the techniques he knows, the ways he has to handle his panic attacks, but it’s like all of them have left him, suddenly. He tries to gesture, for Richie, something that looks like his inhaler, something to communicate the only idea he has left.

“Oh, God, right, the inhaler. But you don’t use one anymore - okay, come on, let’s go to the pharmacy, we’ll take the car, let’s see what they can do for us, yeah, Eds?”

So Richie pulls him out to the car, and they squeal to a stop in the alleyway beside the pharmacy, where they definitely are not meant to park. Richie pulls Eddie into the pharmacy and up to the front counter, and he starts babbling at them.

“Look, we don’t have a prescription, but surely you have some kind of over the counter inhaler or something - it doesn’t even have to be a real inhaler, like it doesn’t have to be medicated, I know that sounds strange, it’s just - it’s the best way to get him down from a panic attack-”

“Oh shit, Eddie Kaspbrak,” the woman behind the counter says - and Eddie really does not have the capacity to react, but it’s clearly Greta Keene behind the counter. Eddie gives her a little wave, even as he’s still gasping and clutching onto Richie with his other hand.

After a minute or two, Greta comes back with an inhaler and hands it to Richie, who hands it to Eddie. Eddie squeezes the inhaler, takes one deep breath, and then another.

Finally, he can breathe. In, out, in, out. He starts to recover.

“Your mom sure did a fucking number on you, huh?” Greta asks.

Eddie doesn’t respond.

Richie says, “Right, well, your fucking dad called, he wants his life back. Do we owe you for the phony inhaler or not?”

She gives Richie a disgusted look. “How about you take it and don’t come back? Losers.”

At that, Eddie breaks into giggles, and he pulls Richie with him as they walk quickly out of the store. They make it back to the car, back out in the alleyway, and Eddie’s still laughing, which makes Richie laugh with him.

“God she- What a bitch! You were having a fucking anxiety attack, and she’s just-”

“She was always like that, Rich. She was - Actually she was the one that wrote loser on my cast. I probably should have told her to get some new material.”

Richie laughs at that, too, and they sit in the car, just savoring this one moment of safety and comfort.

“Do you want to go- I don’t want to say it again just in case.”

Sighing, Eddie turns his inhaler over in his hands. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

So they drive to the other side of town and pull up right in front of Eddie’s old house. A lot comes back all at once. Sitting in this very same position, in the passenger’s seat of his mother’s car, with a freshly broken arm - that same day they’d all seen It at Neibolt, they’d brought him back here, riding in the basket on the front of Mike’s bicycle, and his mother had gone off on all of them. Eddie could only sit there in the car, terrified and guilty, while his mother blamed all of his friends and told them all Eddie would never see them again.

He remembers, too, though, having Bill and Richie over before they’d all go to the Barrens, raiding his mom’s snack pantry for every terrible food he technically wasn’t supposed to be eating. Richie up in his room reading comics with him. Bill and Richie and Stan all hanging out in his room when his mom wasn’t home, when they were all still just kids, not even teenagers yet.

Eddie gets out of the car, looking at the house, and Richie is beside him right away.

“You know that day you got your arm broken, we all fought afterwards. I think I told you that,” he tells Eddie.

“When you called, yeah. Didn’t stop you from trying to sneak and see me. Watching outside the Capitol for when I’d go to the pharmacy.”

“We’ve established how obvious I was already, babe.”

Eddie snorts, and looks away from the house, over to Richie. “Was there a point to this?”

“Oh, right, well - I just wanted to tell you that I went off on Bill that day because you got hurt, and I was really afraid I might never see you again. I never should have lost track of you in that fucking house, and then - I don’t know. I felt like your mom was right, I felt like it was my fault, a little bit. But you didn’t give a shit.”

“Of course I didn’t give a shit, it wasn’t your fault, dipshit.” Eddie leans in and kisses Richie.

“_Eddie-bear_,” a voice says from the house, and Eddie freezes, shoves Richie away on impulse, and feels awful about it.

Richie reaches over and takes his hand anyways, and Eddie grabs it gladly.

The front door of the house swings open. “_Eddie-bear, what are you looking for_?”

Eddie takes a step, but Richie tugs at his arm. “Eds, are you sure about this?”

Taking a deep breath, Eddie nods. “I think I have to.” When Richie looks at him again, Eddie clenches his jaw and walks in front, letting Richie walk behind him.

In spite of the FOR SALE sign in the yard, the house looks just the same on the inside as it did when Eddie was a kid. Eddie knows it must be some kind of trick. It doesn’t matter, though, at first, because standing there, he remembers something else. He remembers the day he stood up to his mother.

_ They’re gazebos! They’re bullshit! _

He squeezes tightly at Richie’s hand, and turns around. “Okay, I think I’m good, let’s get the fuck-”

Only there, behind Richie, blocking the door, is his mother.

It can’t be his mother, because his mother is dead, but she doesn’t look dead. She looks just the same, the same as she had that day, imposing as she blocks the door and frowns at him and tries to keep him from going anywhere.

He drops Richie’s hand, guilty, still terrified when his mother is right there in front of him.

Richie makes a noise, but Eddie can barely hear it over the rushing in his own ears.

“_Eddie-bear, you know you’re sick, why did you stop taking your pills_?”

“I’m sorry, mommy,” he says, just out of instinct, out of an instinct he would have assumed he’d lost sometime in the last seven years since she died, but apparently he hasn’t.

In front of his eyes, his mother starts to rot. Her skin starts to decay, and maggots begin to push their way through her skin and her eyes. “_Why would you leave me here? How could you do this to me? Run away with that dirty boy? You know he’s no good for you, Eddie_.”

Her mouth opens wide, and pills start to fall out, just streaming out of her mouth.

Eddie backs up, but hands land on his shoulders, big hands that start to squeeze. Eddie shouts, and turns around, then sees that it’s Richie, looking at him, terrified, his eyes wide, his mouth still half-open in fear. God, _Richie_.

When Eddie turns back around, his mother is reaching towards him. The anger rises up in his chest - the frustration he’s always had with the way that she was able to control him for so long, with the way that it still lingered even after her death. He grabs his inhaler from his pocket, feeling the weight of it in his hand, the sickly nauseous feeling of having it back and having needed it. He bounces it in his hand, once, and then he chucks it at her. “Fuck you! Fuck you and everything you ever tried to do to me, you bitch!”

Something about Eddie speaking seems to have broken the spell Richie was under, and he finally takes Eddie’s hand again and pulls him out of the house and back into the street.

Once they’re safely away, Eddie breaks free from Richie and yells back at the house. For a moment, the clown appears in the doorway and waves at them both. “_Beep beep, Richie_!” It says, and then It closes the door again.

Richie comes over to place his hands on Eddie’s shoulders again, and Eddie realizes he’s shaking. He turns, finally, and presses his face against Richie’s chest as he starts to cry.

“Was Greta right? Did I let her ruin my life? Did I-” He breaks off, breathing heavy. “I had to use my inhaler again after all this time, and I feel so - it makes me feel like she won.”

“Eds. Eddie, hey. Think about New York. Think about our house, after all that time we spent remodeling. Think about the way things were before Bill called. Are you happy there?”

He pulls back, and looks up at Richie. “What kind of question is that? Richie, of course I’m happy, I’m not - it was the happiest I’ve ever been other than here with all of you guys, and before I remembered that it was absolutely the happiest I’d ever been.”

“Then she didn’t ruin your life. Look at what you’ve done. You beat her. Of course you fucking beat her.”

Eddie shakes his head. “Then why am I still afraid of her?”

“Because she’s fucking scary, Eds.”

In spite of himself, Eddie laughs a little at that, and presses his face against Richie’s chest again. “You were the one in love with her.”

“In retrospect, those jokes were maybe in poor taste.”

That absolutely sets Eddie off, and he laughs so hard he yells a little at first, clutching at Richie’s shoulders. He laughs until his eyes water, and he has to wipe at them under his glasses. Eventually, somehow, he catches his breath, and finds himself able to speak again. “Oh my God, shut up! You would not - those jokes were so bad and now you regret them? Because of this?”

“I mean mostly I was just kind of projecting anyways. They were only ever jokes about _ your _ mom, Eds, not anyone else’s.”

Eddie looks up at that, a little startled. He blinks, and starts to smile. “I never noticed that. How did I not notice that?”

“I don’t know, but trust me, thirteen year old Richie was really fucking glad you didn’t. Let’s blow this shitty old popsicle stand and head back to the Town House, yeah? Grab some drinks, maybe order a pizza?”

“Oh, God, yes please.”

So they get back in the car, and Richie drives them back towards the Town House - back towards their friends, who’ve probably seen just as much shit as they have, at this point.

* * *

For the first time since he got to Derry, Stan feels really okay. Even at the Chinese restaurant, nerves about seeing everyone had quickly turned to paralyzing fear when the conversation had turned to the reason they were really there. Then the fortune cookies had all come to life - or in Stan’s case, just fucked with his head completely.

Now, though, in the grass with Bill and Mike, feeling like they’ve escaped again, he can laugh and really mean it.

Of course, it’s only a minute or two before Bill calms down and his breathing evens out, and he turns to Stan and says, “Alright, Stan. Wh-where to next?”

The good mood fades so quickly that it feels like it was never there - it leaves something cold and aching in its absence. An empty place where the good feelings should still be. Stan wraps his arms around himself and sighs. Then, he shifts, and drops his head forward into his hands. “Why do we have to go anywhere, Bill?” He looks up, glances desperately over at Mike. “Haven’t we seen enough? Haven’t you two seen enough? I remember enough to know I shouldn’t fucking be here, and I’ve seen enough to know it’s back and it isn’t dead and Bill was right - it’s just going to keep doing this now, and my only hope is that if we stay and we fight it again, I can leave and forget on the plane ride home before I even touch down in Atlanta.”

“You… You really want to f-f-forget again?” Bill asks.

“Yes, Bill! Yes, I’m sorry, but I would give up every good memory I ever had of this place or any of you if I could just forget again.”

Bill opens his mouth to say something else, but Mike puts a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s okay, Stan.” Mike tells him. “I remember - you were the only one that got... attacked.”

“The only one with their head in its fucking mouth, Mike? Is that what you’re trying not to say? Because I’ll say it! It unhinged its jaw and had my entire fucking head in its mouth, and I still have the scars to prove it! Scars that disappeared somehow for nearly 27 years!”

Bill scoots over and wraps his arms around Stan, pulling him into a hug. Mike wraps his arms around both of them. It’s nice, in a way, but it still makes Stan realize that he’s shaking.

“I fucking hate this. I hate being here. Pat told me I should come back, maybe it would help to see what I was repressing, but sometimes the brain represses things for a reason - sometimes I think it’s better not to know.” He says it quietly, and Bill and Mike both tighten their arms around him.

“M-maybe you’re right, Stan. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked you to c-come back.”

Stan sighs, relaxing a little, nudging his head against Bill’s shoulder. “Maybe. But I didn’t have to come back, either. I promised. I made you a promise and I wanted to keep it. For you, and for Georgie.”

After a moment, Bill and Mike both loosen their grip, and Stan makes himself stand up. He dusts off his pants, straightens his clothes. He goes over and picks up Silver, making sure it wasn’t bent when they all fell off. He pulls out the stand, so it’s sitting up properly, the way that it should.

“You know I-” He starts to say something, something totally unrelated, really, but something less terrifying that popped into his head. Then, he decides to just say fuck it and say it anyways, because it’ll distract all of them. “You know I think part of the reason I agreed to that oath was just because I had a crush on you when we were kids,” Stan says, looking over at Bill.

Bill looks a little startled, and he blushes.

Stan snorts.

Mike laughs, too, and looks over at Stan with a grin. “I mean, didn’t everybody?”

That makes Stan laugh even harder, really properly laugh, and he shakes his head. “I don’t think Richie or Eddie did, I think they were a little preoccupied. But the rest of us…”

Bill looks at Mike. “Are you saying you did, too?”

His smile shifting a little, into something softer, Mike shrugs. “Like I said. I think we all did.”

Bill’s face is practically bright red. It makes Stan practically double over laughing. “God, you - oh, you should see the look on your face.”

Apparently, Bill doesn’t have a response to that, because he just gets back on Silver and starts pedaling. That sets Stan and Mike both off again, and they laugh together as Bill leaves them behind. Mike comes closer and throws an arm over Stan’s shoulders. “Stan the Man, I really have missed you.”

Stan turns and smiles at Mike. “Missed you, too, Mike.”

After a few minutes, Bill slows down a little, and Stan and Mike catch up to him again.

“So are we g-going back to the Town House or what?” Bill asks, apparently determined to ignore Mike and Stan’s joint attempt to embarrass him.

“We could - if you guys really wanna make me relive something, which to be fair can’t be nearly as terrifying as anything I’ve already remembered, we could go to the Temple. That’s where I first saw It. I remember that.”

Bill nods. “Anyone want to h-hop on?” he asks.

“Nah, Bill, I think we’re good.” Mike tells him.

So they stay like that, Bill pedaling in circles around them as they take their leisurely stroll towards the temple. Bill’s able to keep himself upright on Silver now, presumably with the practice he got on the way out to the farm. The bike rides surprisingly well for having been sitting in a pawn shop for who knows how long. Maybe whatever can do that is the same thing that left a functional bolt gun in Mike’s old barn, and the same thing that let them fight It and live when they were just 13. Maybe there is something to all of them being here, together.

Before long, Stan can see the Temple up ahead of them. It looks like there’ve been some renovations done, but not many. The signs tells them the Rabbi’s name has changed, obviously, but it looks like the same old sign, the same old letters that Stan used to have to change out at his father’s request.

When they reach the door, Stan pushes it open and wanders inside. It’s empty, but still clean. Again, very little has changed. It’s achingly familiar. He spent so much time in this Temple. Not just practicing for his Bar Mitzvah - he was practically raised here. His parents had raised them there, but so had the other adults who came to Temple. Every older Jewish person in town had known who Stan was, had asked him about school, had asked his father about him. He’d been born in Derry and spent multiple days a week in the Temple up until the year they’d finally moved away.

As a teenager, he’d had mixed feelings about it. The Bar Mitzvah, especially, had felt strange in the wake of his own discomfort with manhood, and with the idea of change. Now, in retrospect, he’d been happy much of the time he’d been at Temple. Maybe not during his father’s sermons, but in the other time spent doted on by everyone else. In the times that Richie’s mother had dragged him to Temple and he and Richie had quietly passed notes if they were allowed to sit together.

Richie was the only one of them that had attended his disastrous Bar Mitzvah.

He laughs at the thought of it, and Bill and Mike look over at him from where they stand in the doorway.

“Sorry, just - neither of you were at my Bar Mitzvah.”

“N-no. We were all f-fighting, after I punched Richie, and I kn-knew he’d-”

“I’m not saying you should have been.”

“I was keeping my distance, too. Did you want any of us there?”

Stan shrugs. “I don’t know. At the time, not really. Richie came, and I think his mother was just excited that he actually wanted to come to Temple. I just mean that you guys missed it, because I really took that thing off the rails. I told everyone that I wasn’t sure how I felt about becoming a man - and I said I was a loser, and I always fucking would be. That was the first time I ever cursed in Temple - I think my dad wanted to kill me. The rabbi’s son said fuck in the middle of his Bar Mitzvah.”

Bill laughs, and Mike grins at him.

“That sounds like Stan the Man, alright.”

Huffing out a little laugh, Stan shakes his head at Mike. “I don’t know. I just - I meant it. I was scared, after that fight, that we’d lose each other. And we - I guess in the end we did. I came back to see you guys. The first thing I remembered is just how much I loved all of you. I still do. It never had a chance to fade, because I forgot before it could, you know? So maybe we would have grown apart, but this doesn’t feel like it counts. Now, instead - I still just wish I could forget again. But I don’t regret coming back. It’s good to see everyone again.”

“H-how’d Richie react?” Bill asks.

“Oh, he clapped. You know. Trashmouth at his finest.”

Bill snorts. “Yeah. S-sounds like Rich.”

“We sat outside, after I walked out - he got away from his mom and he chased after me. He gave me a hug, and it was one of the only times I ever saw him serious. It was nice.”

Mike nods at him. “Richie’s always been smarter than he wants to let on.”

While they all linger on that for a moment, Stan looks up the stairs, to the room where his father’s office used to be.

For a moment, he hears flute music.

It’s that same, haunting tune.

His hearts starts to pound, and his throat closes up.

“Do you guys-”

“Yes.” Mike says.

“Y-yeah.”

There’s the sound, then, of the flute hitting the floor, and rolling. It comes rolling out of the partly open door, and starts to thump its way down the stairs.

Stan doesn’t need to see anything else.

He takes Bill’s hand on one side, and Mike’s on the other, and he pulls them both outside. They all pile onto Silver again, and Stan just hopes that this time Bill can get them all to the Derry Town House as quickly as fucking possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah no seriously can you guys believe this chapter is like 14000 words long lkajsdf what a BEAST. seriously, though, i really enjoyed writing this chapter because i got to right a lot of wrongs and it just felt so good. let me know if you got spooked! or if you just enjoyed any of the other character interactions which i also had a lot of fun writing.
> 
> reminder you can find me on tumblr @eddykaspbraks and i love to talk about reddie and IT and to yell, so send me prompts or yell at me about my fic, whatever!


	4. the interlude

_I'm so glad I found you, I'm not gonna lose you_   
_ Whatever it takes I will stay here with you_   
_ Take it to the good times, see it through the bad times  
Whatever it takes here's what I'm gonna do_

_Let 'em say we're crazy, what do they know_   
_ Put your arms around me baby don't ever let go_   
_ Let the world around us just fall apart  
Baby we can make it if we're heart to heart_

_And we can build this thing together_   
_ Stand this stormy weather  
Nothing's gonna stop us now_

Starship, _ Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now _

I just hope that one day - preferably when we’re both blind drunk - we can talk about it.

J.D. Salinger, _ Franny and Zooey _

* * *

He and Richie make it back to the Town House with the car in one piece, and they don’t see anything else - which is all Eddie could really ask for at this point. It’s only a few yards from the street to the door, but Eddie reaches out and clutches at Richie’s hand anyways, pulling him across the short distance. It feels absurd, especially out in the still-bright sunlight, but Eddie isn’t taking any risks after the day they’ve had already.

Eddie exhales as soon as they make it through the door, practically feeling the tension fall away from his shoulders. He doesn’t know why, though. Surely if It could get them in the Capitol It could get them in here just as easily. He looks over at Richie, and Richie’s looking better too, less pale, a little less wild around the eyes. It makes him keep his mouth shut.

For the moment, then, this is home base in a twisted game of hide and seek. Maybe this is the one place they really can be safe.

Bev and Ben are sitting in the lounge already, wide-eyed and damp. Bev’s curls fall limply around her face, and she’s sitting on the couch facing Ben with a blanket around her shoulders. He’s taken an armchair, where he has on his pajamas, and his knees are curled up to his chest.

“What the fuck happened to you two?” Richie asks.

“Oh, you know,” Bev says, her voice just slightly too tight to be casual. “Fake Henry Bowers in a clown suit, balloons full of blood. We both had to take showers when we got back. How about you?”

Richie goes over to the couch and sits down right next to Bev. “Got my very own snuff film at the Capitol. Adam Sandler eat your heart out! I already made it up on the big screen and I’m not even leaving SNL yet.”

Bev snorts in spite of herself, but her eyes get even wider. “Beep beep, Rich,” she says after, shooting a look at Eddie.

He’s trying to let himself laugh at Richie’s joke, but his arm is starting to hurt and he can’t pin down why. He’s got a headache from some combination of the eighty other things that have happened today - the anxiety attacks or the running around or the general unending terror. He pushes his glasses up and pinches at the bridge of his nose. “Mine was my mom,” he says quietly, to answer the unspoken question.

“Oh Eddie,” Bev says, and then she’s pulling him over to the couch, just so she can wrap him in a hug. 

He ends up sitting between her and Richie, and Richie puts a hand on his back, too.

“You guys should have seen him - he really went off on It. Threw his inhaler and everything!” Richie brags - though his voice is soft, a hint of genuine pride in it. With that in mind, Eddie finally manages a tiny smile, and aims it at Richie.

“Bev kicked It in the crotch,” Ben tells them with that same quiet pride.

Richie laughs, one loud, sharp sound, and Eddie turns to look at Bev, stifling his own round of giggles.

“Really Bev?” he asks her.

“Well It… looked like my dad.”

She gives Eddie a little half-smile and a shrug, and he pulls her into another hug, hooking his chin over her shoulder and just holding on.

“It was pretty cathartic,” she admits, just saying it quietly into his ear.

He huffs out something that’s almost a laugh. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

“Any sign of the trio yet?” Richie asks.

Eddie finally pulls back, but he leaves an arm around Bev’s shoulders as he turns to watch Ben shake his head.

“Well I’m sure they’ll turn up soon, just as traumatized as the rest of us,” Richie says, throwing an arm around Eddie.

Resituating a little, Eddie leans his head against Richie’s shoulder, and Bev leans back against Eddie’s chest, so the three of them are all sort of curled up together on the couch.

“How much do you guys remember now?” Eddie asks.

Ben looks over, watching all three of them. “Basically everything, for better or worse.” He pauses, then starts to fidget, like he wants to say more.

Richie cuts him off. “Hey Mr. Handsome, you can come join the cuddle pile if you want, there’s plenty of room on the couch.”

Laughing, Ben ducks his head and blushes, but he stands up and walks over in spite of it.

Richie yanks him down and wraps an arm around him, pressing a smacking kiss to his cheek. Ben laughs, and shoves a little, but eventually ends up with his legs across all of their laps, Bev’s hand on his ankle, Richie’s arm over his shoulders. Richie’s other arm is still around Eddie.

“I’m stealing you from Eddie,” Richie says, ruffling Ben’s hair.

“Weren’t you the one telling Stan we could make this a throuple?” Eddie asks, and Richie looks at him like he’s completely shocked. Bev bursts out laughing, and she doesn’t really stop, giggling so hard she gets tears in her eyes. Ben’s face is bright red, and every time she looks at him, she gets started laughing again.

“God I love you,” Richie says, his eyes locked on Eddie. He leans in for a kiss, just a quick little press of lips, and Eddie meets him in the middle.

“If you guys start making out, this is definitely gonna get weird,” Bev tells them, still in between giggles.

“What, you guys aren’t down for the orgy?” Richie asks, wrinkling his nose.

Eddie groans and turns away to bury his face in Bev’s hair, and she reaches behind him to shove at Richie.

That’s how Stan, Bill, and Mike find them when they get back - the four of them still all tangled on the couch, joking around like kids.

Mike grins at them, still watching from the doorway. Bill looks at them fondly - but his expression is complicated, probably still troubled by whatever he saw.

Mike walks over and sits beside Bev, and then Stan comes in, spots all of them, and sits on the arm of the couch over on the other side of Ben, reaching a hand over to hold onto Richie’s arm. Eddie reaches over and puts his hand on Stan’s, there on Richie’s arm.

The couch was definitely not made for six fully-grown adults, so Eddie’s practically in Richie’s lap at this point, and Bev is half in Eddie’s lap and half in Mike’s. Eddie’s pretty sure some part of him is touching almost all of them - but it’s nice. Really, really nice after everything he’s been through that day.

“Come on, get in here, Big Bill,” Mike says, reaching out an arm.

They all nod or call out to him, and Bill sighs like he’s deeply put-upon, but comes over anyways. Mike pulls him down, so then Bill is sitting in his lap with his legs stretched out over the rest of them. Stan starts laughing first, which sets them all off, and as they dissolve into shaking laughter, the couch lets out an ominous creaking sound beneath them.

Stan is the first one to stand back up, shaking his head, and he gives Bill a shove at about the same time Mike does, so that he goes toppling to the ground and sits there sputtering up at the rest of them. Richie is laughing his biggest, loudest, most obnoxious laugh, which Eddie loves. Bev is giggling uncontrollably again, and Ben is laughing so hard it looks like he’s lost his breath.

Eventually, Bill goes and sits in the closest armchair, and Mike sits on the armrest next to him. Bev and Richie and Eddie all stay on the couch, and Ben sits on the floor right by Bev while Stan takes the other armchair all to himself.

“So what happened to you guys?” Bev asks, once they’ve all calmed down.

“You mean before you sh-shoved me on the floor?” Bill replies, still pretending to be annoyed.

Mike scoffs at him, reaches over and squeezes his shoulder. “I think you can take it, Billy.”

Stan looks over at Bev. “We all saw something - or heard something. Bill at Jackson and Witcham again, Mike out at his farm, me at the Temple. What about you guys?”

Richie looks over at Eddie, raising an eyebrow.

“Richie and I went to the Capitol and back to my place. Bev and Ben-”

“We went to the library and back to my place,” Bev finishes, shooting Eddie another little smile. 

All of the similarities in their experiences are making Eddie wish desperately that he’d talked to her more when they were kids. He’d always liked Bev, in a distant sort of way, but at the time he’d felt strange just because of how much he hadn’t been attracted to her. That day at the quarry when she’d first really joined them, all of the others had stared - and Eddie had looked at her because everyone else had been looking, but all he had felt was a complete absence of understanding. She had always been nice to him when they were kids, a comforting presence, someone that Eddie felt he could have told anything to - but she’d left before he ever quite managed. That feels like a bigger missed opportunity now that he realizes how much they might have helped each other. He just hadn’t known exactly how to react to her at first as a kid. Now he’s glad they’re past all that.

“And you all r-remember?” Bill asks, breaking them all from their thoughts.

Eddie nods - he can feel Richie nodding, too, and watches as everyone else does.

“Everything?” Bill presses.

This time, Eddie speaks up. “I don’t remember - everything in the sewer. I remember I had a broken arm, and it was after you all fought, and we had to go back to fight it…”

“I remember I brought the bolt gun from my grandfather’s farm, and Henry Bowers caught up with us,” Mike adds.

“...And that was when I got separated from all of you,” Stan says quietly.

They all pause for a moment.

“I wasn’t with any of you, though, that day. That was the same day I hit my father - he tried to attack me and I hit him with the lid off the back of our toilet, I smashed the ceramic over his head. And then-” Bev cuts herself off, staring out at the doorway, looking haunted. “Then It found me.”

“We w-went down there to find you, Bev,” Bill gently reminds her.

Richie interjects, “Holy shit, I remember that.” He looks first at Bill, then over at Bev, like he’s checking that she’s here, and safe. “You came to me in the arcade, and you told me It took Bev - we were still fighting.”

“And Richie called me, so I met you all at Neibolt. And then we went down. And… everything happened,” Eddie finishes.

“I got...I got caught in those… lights.” Bev says, her voice smaller now.

Eddie tightens his arm around her, and she presses her face against his shoulder. Ben, from the floor, rubs his hand against her calf, just as a sign that he’s there, too. Richie reaches over behind Eddie and runs his fingers through Bev’s hair.

“D-deadlights. We called them th-the deadlights,” Bill tells her.

“I saw them, too,” Stan says. Bev lifts her head, and they all turn and look at him. “When It - when my head was… They were up, inside Its throat. I saw them, too.”

Bev gets up then, untangles herself and goes to sit beside Stan, squeezing into the armchair with him and pulling him into a hug. Mike gets up and goes over, putting a hand on Stan’s shoulder, too. Stan sags gratefully into the touch, and Eddie watches, still curled up with Richie. He’s terrified to think of what else they might still be forgetting - terrified of what else might happen if they go back down there. _ When _ they go back down there.

“After we got Stan back, I remember - Bill, you ran off. So we went after you,” Eddie says, remembering even while he says it. He can remember Stan’s screaming, the way he’d flinched away as everyone tried to comfort him. Then Eddie had noticed Bill was gone.

“I found Bev, but I found… It, too. It was p-pretending to be G-Georgie.”

“We all found Bev still up there. And we pulled her down, and I… got her out.” Ben continues.

“You kissed me,” Bev adds with a little smile, looking over at Ben. It makes Ben blush. Amidst the horrors of all they’ve repressed, it’s a beacon of light to watch the two of them dancing around each other. It’s sort of sweet.

“That was when-”

But as Bill starts to say it, Eddie remembers, and Richie’s grip tightens on his shoulders but Eddie can barely feel it - he assumes they’re all remembering together, just like at the restaurant.

The bolt gun. The fight. _ Welcome to the Loser’s Club, asshole_!

Eddie can practically still hear Richie’s battle cry ringing in his ears as he comes back to himself, and as he does, he reaches over and smacks Richie in the arm. “I told you that you did something brave, you asshole! You never listen to me!”

“Eds, please, I listen to you all the time.”

Everyone else is looking at them, so Eddie tries to explain. “When Richie and I started remembering he said I was brave and he was just stupid - obviously, he’s both, so I told him he just wasn’t remembering everything. As is so frequently the case in the Kaspbrak-Tozier household, I was right.” He turns to Richie again and sticks out his tongue, and Richie gives him one of those absolutely gorgeous hopelessly besotted looks. It makes Eddie feel like his heart might stop - the same way he’ll probably feel about that face even when they’re both a hundred years old. “Stop looking at me like that,” Eddie protests half-heartedly.

“You said Kaspbrak-Tozier.”

“Well that’s what we decided on, we’re-” He looks around, and everyone is smiling at them, and Bev is laughing a little. “Okay, look, stop. This is extremely embarrassing, this is probably worse than the public proposal.”

Richie, of course, takes that opportunity to start crooning Queen’s _ Love of my Life _ as he tugs Eddie close and nuzzles into his hair, and literally everyone else in the room is laughing at them.

“I fucking hate all of you. I don’t know why I came back here,” Eddie complains.

“You guys are just the same,” Mike says, grinning.

Bill snorts. “It is s-sort of uncanny. You got engaged b-but you still just act like teenagers.”

Richie stops singing just to say, “We acted like this because we were also desperately in love when we were teenagers, but like Romeo and Juliet-”

Eddie hides his face in his hands and it muffles his voice. “Can we please, please just go back to talking about the Lovecraftian horror clown in the sewer.”

That one makes Stan snort, and Eddie peeks out through his fingers just to look over at him and smile.

Ben says, “I don’t really want to agree with that, but we probably should have a plan.”

The mood shifts again - the neverending swinging pendulum of their entire situation. Here they all are, finally back together again in one place, but only for the worst possible reason. That same reason that’s going to hang over their heads and haunt them until It’s finished.

“R-right.” Bill says. He stands up. “So the only way to f-fight it - just like last time, we’ll have to go b-back. Back down there, under Neibolt.”

“I had a feeling you were going to say that,” Stan mutters.

“Yeah, uh- if we couldn’t do it last time, Bill-” Richie starts, but Bill flinches violently, like he’s been slapped.

“We almost g-got it, I know we did, we almost d-did, we can get it now, I promise,” Bill rushes to say, his words nearly all jumbling together.

Mike stands up and goes over to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll need a strategy, though.” He tells Bill. “We used real weapons last time, baseball bat, a chain, a pole, fence posts, the bolt gun. So we just go down there and fight it?”

“We can’t be af-fraid of It. Last t-time. That was when we hurt it.”

Bev nods. “I told It I wasn’t afraid and it reacted - and remember right before It sank down, back under the sewer, It was afraid. We made It afraid.”

Stan cuts in. “Right, so we’ve got a bolt gun, and maybe some rusty fence posts, but none of us brought any real weapons? No machine guns, no tasers? And we don’t have any kind of plan except to just run back in there and try again. What about all the shit it did last time? What about all the ways it tries to separate us? I was right there with you guys in the sewer, and then I turned and I wasn’t anymore! How do you fight something like that? How are we not going to stock up on something or have any kind of significant plan?”

“Stan, we w-won’t leave you alone again,” Bill tells him.

“I think if we’re not afraid of it, and if we all take weapons down there, if we really think we can beat it, and we stick together - I think we can do it this time,” Ben says quietly.

Bill nods, and so does Mike. Stan sighs and stands up, crossing his arms as he walks over to them. One by one, they all gather in the center of the room, Eddie going up together with Richie, the two of them back to holding hands.

“The r-rules, then. We get weapons before we go down. We s-stick together. No one gets l-left alone, especially St-Stanley, and we kill It this time,” Bill says, looking at each of them in turn.

Eddie nods at Bill.

“Okay, great, well since we have a plan, can we all just lighten the fuck up now? Can we order some pizza, have a few drinks, and just like hang out for one night? Cause I’m gonna need some fucking food before I wander down into a sewer to kill a monster again.” Richie says, obviously trying to lighten the mood.

It works, though, and everyone else sort of laughs and smiles again. They all let the obvious nature of the subject change slide just because they’re all so desperate to stop talking about It.

The call to the pizza place is absolute chaos, just like it always was when they were kids. Mike tries to put in the call and all of them start insisting on their preferences, all over top of each other. Mike, like a sensible adult man, orders his own pizza first and makes sure the crust is vegan. Then he starts trying to translate everyone else’s orders. Stan wants something plain, Richie demands pineapple, Bill gets extremely specific about his hatred of olives.

In the end, they end up with one half-Hawaiian half-veggie, one pepperoni, one cheese, and Mike’s own personal pizza. Vaguely, Eddie remembers that this is how every argument had always ended at every big sleepover where they all piled into Bill’s house. They would have lengthy debates over the merits of pizza toppings and then always end up with the same three.

Eddie turns to Richie and leans up to kiss him. Then he murmurs, “Once you have your gross pineapple pizza, I’m not kissing you again until you’ve brushed your teeth.”

“I know, babe.” Richie kisses him again, though, and lingers just long enough to make Eddie remember they’re in front of their friends.

Still, everyone else is talking and not really paying them any attention, so Eddie leans back in and presses one more kiss to the corner of Richie’s mouth.

While they wait for the pizza, they all grab drinks from the Town House bar and settle back in on the lounge seats. Richie pulls Eddie back to the couch, practically in his lap this time. Bev and Ben sit on the couch with them. Bill and Mike take one armchair, and when Stan is left, this time he takes the remaining small space on the couch, squeezing in between Ben and Eddie. Eddie turns to smile at him and Ben throws an arm around him.

“Alright, well someone tell a story or something if we’re all gonna gather around the metaphorical fireplace,” Richie says, hooking his chin over Eddie’s shoulder.

“Bill, you’re a writer,” Mike insists, grinning as he tightens his arm around Bill’s shoulders.

Bill snorts. “Yeah, a horror w-writer. Think we’ve all had enough of th-that. Not to mention the… fucking stutter came back.”

“You didn’t stutter the whole time?” Stan asks.

Bill shakes his head. “Came back when I saw the n-newspaper. With th-the kid.”

“Shit, Bill, no wonder you wanna kill it so bad,” Richie says, and Eddie smacks him on the back of the head.

It doesn’t matter, though, because Bill laughs and flips Richie off, and Richie flips him off right back even as he pulls Eddie tighter into his lap, adjusting the way they’re sitting.

Ben chimes in, then, “Anyone else have a good story?”

“Well we didn’t really have time to catch all the way up at dinner, did we? So why don’t we just tell stories about how we got where we are? Stan, you said you met your husband in college,” Mike prompts.

“Oh. Yeah, we met at a college party.”

“Stan the Man himself actually went to college parties?” Richie teases, leaning over to look at Stan.

“Beep beep, idiot. I’m perfectly capable of having fun when I want to,” Stan replies, flipping Richie off. “So, yes, we met at a party. I- well. You guys would get it, but obviously nothing had ever really happened in Derry, you know. Childhood crushes that never went anywhere, a lot of reading the graffiti on the kissing bridge and being terrified. But I got to college and suddenly other people were gay. Just people, you know, normal everyday people, even other Jewish people. And I was at this party and this guy bumps into me and spills his beer all over me. It was - oh God, don’t look at me like that but it was a frat party, so immediately I was like, here’s one of those assholes and he doesn’t even know where he’s going and he’s gonna spill his beer on me and say ‘Sorry, bro!’ and try to hi-five me or something. But instead, I look up, and there’s this guy - and he looks mortified. Just absolutely mortified, and not drunk at all. He starts babbling apologies, and I had to tell him it was fine. Neither of us were actually in the frat, but he lived closer so we went to his place and he let me borrow a clean shirt. We started talking. Nothing happened immediately, except I got to know him. He was studying education, and he wanted to teach. He was so passionate about it. He was nice.” Stan’s smiling softly, fondly, as he looks down at the carpet. Eddie knows that look, and that feeling - it’s good to see it on Stan. “I think I knew that first night that I was going to fall in love with him. From there the rest was history. I never thought I’d get that lucky, but I did.”

“Well thank God one of us did,” Bev says, leaning over to ruffle Stan’s hair.

He laughs, and shoves her off, but he’s still smiling and a little flushed. “God, never tell him I said any of that - I think I probably said something equally embarrassing in my wedding vows but if he found out I told all of you I’d never live it down.”

Richie grins. “Oh I’m definitely gonna tell him if you ever let us meet him, Stan the Man.”

“Oh, good, well problem solved, he just never meets you, trashmouth. That sounds like an ideal situation,” Stan replies.

“If I promise to keep Rich away from him will you still bring him to the wedding?” Eddie asks, holding off Richie as he reaches over for Stan.

“You’ve got a deal,” Stan tells him, but he looks a little pleasantly surprised, like he hadn’t even considered the idea that he might be invited to the wedding.

Eddie hopes, again, desperately, that they’ll all remember this time when they leave. He wants to keep this. He wants to keep his memories of Richie, and their shared childhood. He knows that even if they leave, they’ll have each other, that not even this could rip the two of them apart, but Eddie wants all of his friends. He wants his memories. He wants to get rid of the awful thing that stole them all away.

He reaches over and takes Stan’s hand, squeezing it briefly. When Stan doesn’t pull away, neither does Eddie, and so they both just sit there, reveling in the quiet, friendly affection they’ve both been denied for so many years.

“You guys haven’t heard my crazy gym teacher story yet,” Ben tells them all with a smile.

“Aren’t all gym teachers crazy?” Richie wonders aloud.

Bev tilts her head. “I mean, I think I’ve heard there’s at least one good one, somewhere.”

“Sounds pretty fake,” Stan tosses in.

“Still think this one in particular is gonna win the competition,” Ben tells them. “I - well I told all of you in the restaurant about how much I struggled with my body image after I left. Leaving Derry didn’t mean the teasing stopped. That one’s pretty much universal. So first I tried to limit my eating, then my mom noticed and we sort of compromised on me trying to eat more vegetables. But I wasn’t losing a lot of weight while I was still in high school. So one day these kids chase me down after gym class, they stole my clothes and they’re whipping me with towels, just - really, really, awful shit. And a teacher comes in and finds me and the other kids run off. He doesn’t go after them, though. He stands there, hands on his hips, and he tells me he hopes this’ll be the encouragement I need to do something about my body.”

“No way,” Bev says quietly, placing her hand on his arm.

“Oh, yeah way. Definitely yeah way. He was just - that unimaginably awful. But at that point I was sick of it, you know? Everyone else assuming they knew better than me. I decided I wanted to be able to stand up for myself, so I started lifting weights. I didn’t really lose weight at first, I gained muscle, but that gym teacher ran the wrestling team, and I kept working and working and before I graduated, I was practically the star - and I still hadn’t really lost weight, you know it was kind of an advantage when I knew how to use it. And that gym teacher got so pissed off when I won him a championship that he hit me. He hit me, and he lost his job, and I felt fantastic.”

Bev grins and wraps her arm around Ben to give him a little shake.

“Good for you, man. Glad you got back at him,” Mike says.

Richie, over Eddie’s head, says, “I think that’s the most petty thing I’ve heard of you doing, nerd alert. Proud of you, buddy. Glad to know you got buff out of spite.”

“Well I was never gonna be skinny, you know. It took me a long time to be okay with that.”

Eddie shakes his head. “Not everyone can be Richie, don’t worry about it. He’s like the human version of Jack Skellington, it’s like he’s all limbs. I noticed that the first time he climbed into my car in New York.”

Ben snorts.

“Eds!” Richie says.

“Oh but he’s right,” Stan says, looking at Richie over Eddie’s head.

Eddie laughs and leans up to kiss Richie’s cheek.

They’re all still laughing together when the pizza finally gets there.

Richie spends about as much of dinner eating as he does dangling his pizza near Eddie’s face, trying to make him gag. Eddie shoves at him and bumps into Stan, who promises to protect him from the terrifying pineapple pizza.

While they eat, Bev tells the story of how she started her own fashion line. How she got her first job doing a favor for an actress friend of hers, and how she and Kay had discovered they worked well together, balancing each other out, and started Marsh-McCall. How they’d eventually decided to go their separate ways and Bev had branched out, designing freelance for well-known designer brands and stores.

Mike follows her with the story of his restaurant, and Eddie talks about starting his own driving company. Ben talks about getting into architecture, Richie about his comedy.

“I feel like I ch-cheated,” Bill tells them all.

“What does that mean?” Bev asks him.

“I just feel like it was t-too easy, staying here to write horror. I barely had to d-do anything. There’s no better inspiration for… horror than the shit that already h-happens here. I could have lived anywhere and written s-scary stories and they’d have been f-fine, probably. But writing from here, I h-had a well of never ending shit. What happened to G-Georgie, to us, the town itself, the history B-Ben used to tell us all about. You guys all w-worked so hard, and then there’s m-m-me.”

Mike shakes his head. “You’re leaving out the part where I almost stayed here in Derry, and you volunteered instead. This is work, Bill.”

“What, really?” Bev asks, lifting her head up off of Ben’s shoulder.

Mike continues, keeping his eyes locked on Bill. “All of you moved away, just because your parents took you with them, but my grandfather was determined to stay here with his farm until he died. And he did. So here I was, stuck in Derry, knowing I should probably stay, saddled with a farm, and Big Bill Denbrough shows back up in town. He didn’t remember me at first - I saw him once and he didn’t recognize me, at the theater. Then I saw him again, and he did. So we go to this bar to catch up, and nearly the first thing he does is tell me to get the fuck out of Derry. At this point, I think he and I both knew what happens when you leave town. So I told him no, and he pushed and pushed, and eventually he talked me into it. He bought me a bus ticket, and I left town. I traveled for a while before I ended up in Houston, too. I never knew why. I could never really remember exactly why I left home, just that I was glad I did, and I should see as much as I could, do whatever I wanted. That was all Bill.”

“God, Bill, you stayed on purpose?” Stan asks.

Bill shrugs, shakes his head. “It j-just… It seemed like my p-place. To stay. Since I made you all p-promise.”

“Well I feel like an asshole now,” Richie says. “Anyone else?”

Eddie tilts his head, trying to make eye contact with Bill. “Yeah, I do, too. Bill… I wish we could make it up to you somehow.”

“Just… Just live. That’ll be g-good enough for me.”

“Bill,” Mike says softly, and he slides down next to Bill to pull him into a real hug.

Lifting his head, Bill peeks out of Mike’s embrace. “Look our p-parents mostly decided who left, I m-made Mike leave, I don’t blame any of you for l-l-leaving. Let’s just all m-make it out of this in one piece, though, yeah?”

“I’ll do my best,” Stan says.

“Yeah, second that,” Richie adds, and they all agree in turn, watching Bill, still all clinging to each other in some way or another.

“Are we officially all staying, then? Are we doing this?” Eddie asks.

There’s a collective sigh, a moment where they all glance around to check - but no one’s leaving. Stan squeezes Eddie’s hand, and Eddie squeezes back.

Stan speaks, then. “Can we at least all try to get some sleep first, though? Or just some kind of rest? I want to call Pat, and I want to lay down, just - breathe, for a while before we go.” 

“I think that’s a g-good idea.” Bill says. “Let’s all just m-meet back up tomorrow morning. We’ll get breakfast, check in with each other, and g-g-go.”

“But let’s all be careful tonight, too,” Mike tells them all. “Bill, I don’t think you should go home - I think we should all stay here in the Town House. And make sure if anyone’s staying alone, you have someone close by who’d hear you if anything happens.”

Richie makes a big gesture out of pulling Eddie close. “So we all stick to the buddy system, got it. I’ve got mine, then.” He presses a loud, smacking kiss to Eddie’s cheek, and Eddie laughs even as he leans away. “Just - really, though, if anyone needs anything, feel free to join me and Eds in our room. I’m sure we can annoy you to sleep.”

Eddie turns to look at Richie’s profile, and presses a kiss to his temple. There’s a few gray hairs just starting to come in, there. If Eddie let himself, he could fall apart just over that, over all the lost time and all the risk they’ve put themselves in coming back - but there’s no time for that breakdown. He wants to make the most of their time here, marry Richie as soon as he can, and especially right now, he can’t afford to waste time mourning the time they’ll never get back.

“Rich is right - anyone needs anything, feel free to knock on our door.”

“Same goes for me,” Mike tells them.

Ben and Bev both nod.

“Right, well first I’m going to call my husband. So I’m going to go upstairs and do that. I’ll see you all in the morning,” Stan tells them, and he pats Eddie and Ben both on the knee as he stands.

He passes by Mike and kisses his temple as he walks by, reaches over to brush a hand against Bill’s shoulder, and then he’s the first one of them to head up.

Bev goes next, and Ben walks her up. Bev kisses them all on the cheek, and then Ben does, too, only half-joking and easily affectionate.

Bill and Mike come over to the couch, then, and they all have another drink before Bill and Mike go upstairs together.

Richie raises an eyebrow at Eddie, but Eddie makes desperate motions at him just to make him shut the fuck up. For once, Richie actually listens. Maybe he realizes that whatever is happening between Bill and Mike is fresh and delicate and doesn’t need his commentary - maybe he’s just tipsy and running out of jokes. Either way, Eddie is glad he listens and doesn’t ruin their little moment.

Then it’s just the two of them downstairs, Eddie’s head pressed against Richie’s shoulder, each of them leaning their full weight against the other.

“Can I just have one more drink before we head upstairs?” Richie asks. “I’m never gonna get drunk with this much fucking adrenaline, but I just keep hoping it’s gonna get easier to try and sleep at some point.”

“Why don’t we just have some water instead, yeah?” Eddie says, reaching over and rubbing at Richie’s knee. “Besides, we- Well you know what doesn’t happen when you drink too much.” Eddie slides his hand up a little further, making sure Richie understands him.

“Oh. _ Oh_. Really? Here?”

“Well, if- I mean I know, I know all our friends are here and it’s weird, but I just-”

“No. No, it’s not weird that's- First of all I can never say no to you and second of all, no, you’re - I’m not gonna say it either but you’re right. Come on. Let’s have some water and go upstairs.”

Eddie nods, and licks his lips. His mouth is suddenly a little dry.

It’s all pretty silly, because for God’s sake they’re engaged, but they haven’t had the time or space to do anything since they both remembered. They don’t really have the time or the space now, but if this is the last night of Eddie’s life, if anything does happen in the sewer - he wants his last night on Earth to be the best it can be. He owes himself that much. Richie deserves that, too.

He goes behind the bar, and gets them both a glass of water with ice.

He brings one to Richie, and they both drink them quickly.

“Race you upstairs?” Richie asks with a grin.

“I am not-” But Eddie gets cut off as Richie literally starts running upstairs. “Oh, for God’s sake,” Eddie mutters - but he follows Richie, just like always. Just at a slightly more reasonable pace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am SO SORRY this took so long!! i went out of town last week/weekend and i thought i could still get a chapter finished but i was in a shared air bnb and it became impossible, just alksf awful for writing. but! here it is! hopefully it's not a disappointment. i'm gonna try to post a oneshot this weekend/week and then i'll have chapter 5 up next week for sure.
> 
> thank you all for your patience and your continued support, this fic would not be possible without you <3 let me know what you think! i hope you enjoy it


	5. in the watches of the night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heads up! this chapter includes both graphic violence and explicit sexual content. this is where this fic earns its rating on the sexual content side especially.

_ There's a room where the light won't find you_   
_Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down_   
_When they do I'll be right behind you_   
_So glad we've almost made it_

Tears for Fears, _ Everybody Wants to Rule the World _  
  


Why talk when you can whisper? Rustle, like dried leaves. Under the bed.  
It’s ugly here, but safer.

Margaret Atwood, “Daphne and Laura and So Forth”

* * *

At the beginning of the night, Bill had every intention of going back to his own house. He’s slept there for over a decade now, alone. The dark and the quiet have been companions enough, and nothing’s ever happened inside the house since the summer of 1989. Now, though, with Pennywise truly active again, Mike is right. Going home alone would be genuinely dangerous - and he’d be leaving everyone else to fend for themselves after they’ve all seen more than enough for one day. So he stays.

Even after he agrees, though, he has every intention of getting his own room. There’s never anyone behind the desk at the Town House, but there’s never any other guests either. He can just walk behind the desk, grab a key, and get a room for the night without a lot of fuss.

Then he and Mike stay downstairs for another drink with Richie and Eddie, and Bill follows Mike up the stairs without thinking about it. He pauses when he realizes he’s forgotten his plan completely.

“Oh. I don’t even have a r-room.” Bill smiles, forces a chuckle. “I sh-should, uh-”

Mike reaches over, pats him on the shoulder and then leaves his hand there. “Bill, c’mon. We can share a room. I don’t think you need to be alone tonight anyways.”

Bill glances back down towards the desk, down the stairs. Mike’s hand is warm on his shoulder. With Richie and Eddie still downstairs, now it’s just the two of them. It’s the first time they’ve been alone together since Mike first arrived at the Chinese restaurant.

Even then, Mike had arrived and pulled him into a long, close hug. He’d asked questions about the others, about Derry, but they’d only had about ten minutes of conversation before Richie and Eddie had arrived.

The trouble is, there’s more to the story of the week Mike left Derry than Bill’s been telling - or really, Mike’s been telling. It’s possible, though, that like so many other memories, that one has faded for Mike. Maybe he still doesn’t have it back. Fuck, maybe he’ll never get it back, Bill doesn’t have any fucking idea how it works.

When he and Mike had gone for that drink, the closest bar had been The Falcon - Derry’s one and only gay bar. Mike had said he knew it was quiet, that no one would bother them there, and Bill had followed him. He hadn’t asked why Mike knew all that - he didn’t need to.

It really had been quiet inside. Every man kept to himself or to the man he was closest to. Bruce Springsteen wailed, muffled in the background. Really, the place is still like that - Bill still goes there from time to time, because he feels safe and comfortable there in a way he wouldn’t in a lot of other places in town. He feels like he won’t be bothered. He exchanges companionable nods with a lot of the other regulars and even knows some of them by name.

The story of that night Mike left, thought, doesn’t just end with Bill telling Mike to get the hell out of Derry. It doesn’t even end with Mike pulling him into an embrace there in The Falcon and pressing their foreheads together.

It ends with Bill, overwhelmed and desperate to stop Mike talking and desperate to scare him out of town, pressing his lips against Mike’s. That one warm, desperate press of lips, that left Mike stunned as Bill walked away and went back to his house, hoping desperately that Mike would be gone the next day - and he was. Bill had gone out to the farm just to check, and ended up sitting on the front steps there, staring out across the overgrown land, alone.

There hasn’t been a day for the last 15 years that Bill hasn’t thought about that kiss. He goes to the Falcon, still, and he never goes home with anyone. Any time he thinks about it, he ends up thinking about Mike instead.

And here Mike is again, back in Derry, all kind smile and warm, gentle hands, and Bill doesn’t even know if he remembers it or not.

Maybe it never happened at all. Maybe Bill rewrote it in his own mind. He’s made a habit of doing that. In writing and rewriting his own childhood a thousand different ways, he’s never sure anymore exactly which way everything really happened. As everyone else puts together their own memories, he gets to hear the way it all really happened.

Standing there on the landing, he has a choice now. If he stays with Mike, he’ll have to talk about it. He can’t keep dancing around it in his head. If he gets his own room, he has to be alone with his own thoughts and memories, knowing Mike is just a short walk down the hallway.

Bill sighs, and shakes his head, but he keeps walking towards Mike’s room.

Mike grins and pats him on the back. “There he is.”

Without trying to seem like he’s dodging the grasp, Bill ducks into the room and moves quickly towards the one chair, over by a desk against the wall. It lets him get away from Mike’s hand and avoid sitting on the bed, which feels far too intimate with what they’ll inevitably end up talking about.

“Bill. Are you really doing alright? I know this is hard on all of us, but with everything you said at dinner about Georgie… Maybe you would have been better off forgetting, the way the rest of us did.”

That makes Bill huff out a little humorless laugh. “It’s not like I’ve never had the th-thought. But it’s what made me so successful, staying behind. And you knew… You kn-knew when you stayed that somebody had to.”

Mike sighs, sitting down on his bed and looking over at Bill. His expression is so earnest that Bill can hardly stand to look at it. “I just wish it hadn’t been you, Billy. Or that I hadn’t let you stay by yourself.”

“Oh c-come on, don’t give me that. You’ve got your restaurant, a place in Houston, you’ve probably got people there-”

“I do have my restaurant, and a string of ex-boyfriends, but I don’t think a single damn part of it was worth coming back to this. I appreciate what you’ve done for us all, Bill, and I need you to know that, but no fucking restaurant is going to make me feel better about what I did.”

“Mikey, jesus. I t-told you to do it!”

“But you always think you have to do everything alone! And what if you didn’t have to? Now, you obviously don’t, we’re all here with you and none of us are gonna leave you behind or let you do this alone, but maybe we could have stayed together in the first place. You’ve always been like that, running off like you killing yourself is gonna save the rest of us. It’s not. And especially this time, I need you to promise me you’re not gonna just throw yourself on a pyre. If it comes down to it, just run. We would all rather you live for us than die for us.”

It’s not the direction Bill had expected this conversation to take. For a moment, he flushes, and stammers. Finally, he has to lower his gaze, looking down at the ugly carpet in the hotel room just to avoid Mike’s disappointed expression. “I’m s-sorry. For… a lot of things, Mike.”

“...Is that you trying to apologize for the fact that you kissed me in the Falcon after you told me to leave?”

Bill’s head snaps up and he’s left blinking at Mike, who mostly just looks sort of tired. “I-I thought you d-didn’t remember that.”

“I remembered it the night you called me. I just wasn’t about to air it out in front of all our friends. You kissed me like you wanted to hit me, Bill.”

That makes Bill’s mouth go dry. He swallows and it makes a dry kind of clicking sound in the quiet room. “Maybe you should be the wr-writer.”

Mike just stares at him.

“Fuck, Mikey, I don’t know what you want me to say. You took me to the Falcon and you got all c-close and I... n-needed you to leave because if I was the reason you stayed I couldn’t have taken it-”

“Do you even realize how fucked up that sounds?”

“No! I didn’t - I didn’t m-mean it like- Fuck!”

Mike lets out a choked kind of laugh and rubs a hand over his face. “What did you mean, then?”

Finally screwing up his courage, Bill stands up, walks over, and sits down on the bed, within reaching distance of Mike. “I thought I might never s-see you again. If It really was dead and we k-killed it, like we all hoped, I thought you’d never come b-b-back. I thought you’d... forget about me. I won’t try to say it was… smart or anything, I did it and I ran off, and I thought it would keep you from trying to f-follow me.”

“I still tried to find you. To say goodbye before I left.” Mike’s sort of smiling now, but there’s something sad in it - something lost behind his eyes. “All the lights were out in your house. I knocked and waited and you didn’t answer, and then I had to go.”

“...If it m-makes you feel better, I didn’t hear you.”

Mike shrugs. “It is what it is.”

“I still go to the Falcon, y-you know. Not that I’ve ever - but I go there to d-drink, and nobody bothers me.”

“Not that you’ve ever…?”

“I don’t go home with anybody. I haven’t-”

“Bill, what are you saying?”

He can’t seem to make himself look at Mike, now. Instead, his gaze is locked on the carpet again. On the ugly print, following the swirls like they’ll lead him to the answer. “I fooled around a little in college, you know, before I moved back, so it’s not like I n-never, but I haven’t, since… You were the last person I even… kissed.”

“Oh. _ Oh _.” That make Bill finally look over again, and Mike looks a little stunned. “I didn’t realize - I mean. I thought maybe it wasn’t that serious, for you.”

“I wasn’t looking after anybody else’s old house, Mikey. And I wasn’t - h-have you ever read my graphic novels?”

“...No, I haven’t.”

Bill flushes, and clears his throat. “Yeah, probably for the best. I thought sometimes maybe… Maybe you or one of the others would see them and remember, but I guess you’re not exactly the t-target audience.”

“Are we in them?”

Glancing over, Bill nods. “Yeah. Everyone is. But especially uh- you.”

Mike laughs, more air than sound, and starts to smile. “Oh yeah? And what exactly am I doing?”

Bill can feel the heat in his face, and he knows he’s gone an embarrassing shade of red for an adult man. “I- Uh…”

“It’s like that, huh?”

“S-sometimes.”

This time when Mike laughs, it’s loud and joyful, with his head thrown back. Bill watches him, the curve of his smile, the little lines around his eyes, the way his Adam’s apple moves. He wants to reach out and touch, somewhere, anywhere. He shifts closer, and catches Mike’s hand with his own.

“Mikey. Hey.”

Mike tilts his head back down, leaning in close and raising an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

Bill nods, licks his lips, and leans in to press a kiss to Mike’s mouth. It’s nothing like that long-ago kiss at the Falcon. This one still has a hint of laughter in it, shared like air between their mouths. All the ugly desperation is gone, and instead, both of them are gentle. Bill has one hand on Mike’s face, right at the place where his jaw meets his neck, but he’s not pulling or holding him there. They’re meeting in the middle, resting there together, with no force at all.

When Bill does pull back, he blinks, and exhales. “Was that better?”

“You’re getting there,” Mike tells him, and he pulls Bill back in for another kiss.

* * *

Bev tosses and turns for about an hour before she gives up. She goes into the bathroom and looks in the mirror to see the bags under her slightly reddened eyes. After everything that’s happened, and after all the time they spent today refusing to split up, she doesn’t know why she thought she could sleep alone.

She knows, though, that she could go to any of them. She could go to Eddie and Richie’s room, and they’d welcome her gladly, make her laugh and keep her company. She could go to Bill and see if any of that old chemistry was still hanging around. She could go to Mike, and they could have more time to catch up, more time to know each other better as adults before they all face down death tomorrow. She could go to Stan - the one she’d called the day she woke up and the blood was still there, and she’d wanted all of their help.

She’s halfway down the hall to Ben’s room, though, before she even finishes thinking through it all. When she’s standing in front of his door, she worries for a moment, that maybe he’ll be asleep or maybe he’s had enough of her after the day they’ve had, but she just shakes it all off and knocks. The worst thing he can do is say no.

He answers the door quickly, meaning he clearly wasn’t asleep. When he opens it, he’s standing there in a long sleeved sleep shirt and flannel pajama bottoms. He looks warm, and the fabric of the shirt looks soft, worn-through in places. It takes a moment for him to really see her, but when he does, he smiles, soft around the edges, his eyes as big and fond as ever.

“Beverly.”

“Hi. I just- I can’t sleep.”

He huffs out a little laugh. “Yeah. Me neither. You want to go downstairs for a drink, or-?”

She shakes her head, wraps her arms around herself. “I thought maybe I could just come in, we could keep each other company - if that’s alright?”

Ben’s eyes go a little wide at that, but he nods. “Yeah, of course. Come in.” He steps aside, holding the door open so Bev can walk in past him.

She edges around him carefully and goes to sit on the bed, bouncing on it a little. She smiles at him, and sits, waiting. He stays standing, shuffling awkwardly.

“So did you - wanna talk?”

Bev shrugs. “We talked a lot today. I think I might be out of stories that are any good. I’m definitely out of happy distractions. But I still - if you were still up, you could probably use the distraction, too, right?”

Shaking his head, Ben looks down at his own feet and shuffles them against the carpet. “I can’t stop thinking about Henry Bowers. I know we’ve got scarier things ahead of us but - I was terrified of him as a kid, Bev. Fucking terrified. That time he had me up against the bridge, I think he would have killed me if I hadn’t gotten away. And maybe it’s this town or that thing, maybe It has something to do with it, but all I know is that he’s still alive out there, and he’s not just crazy. He wanted to kill me. He liked hurting all of us. He lived on it, way before It ever woke up, based on what I’ve heard from Richie and Eddie and Bill and Stan.”

“Hey. Come here.” Ben looks up at her, and steps a little closer. She smiles at him, sadly, and sighs. “The bed’s not gonna catch on fire if you sit down, new kid.”

At that, she finally gets a laugh out of him, and he sits down. She reaches over, and wraps an arm around him. She only has to tug a little and he comes easily, resting his head on her shoulder and leaning against her. He exhales slowly, turns his head so he’s got it pressed right against Bev’s shoulder.

She reaches up and runs her fingers through his hair. “You don’t have to be afraid of him anymore. For one he’s stuck in Juniper Hill for the rest of his life from what Bill says. For another thing, you could beat the shit out of him any day. I’d definitely place my bets on you over Bowers now, I mean. Talk about Hangin’ Tough,” she’s teasing a little at the end, and she squeezes his arm for effect.

He laughs against her, and shakes his head a little, letting it move against her collarbone. She’d bet money on the fact that he’s blushing, but he doesn’t lift his head to let her see. “You’re a menace, Beverly Marsh.”

She laughs, and rests her chin on top of his head. “Got you to laugh, though. See? Now you’re distracted.” She moves again, combs his hair back from his temple and then presses a kiss there.

The funny thing is, she really hadn’t realized she hadn’t kissed him when they went upstairs - but she must not have. She can only tell because of the way he shivers, practically head to toe, and then tenses up like he can brace himself against it if it were to happen again. It stirs something in Bev. She’s never had that kind of effect on anyone. She and Kay were all push and pull and she’s never had anyone - anything like this.

Leaning back, she puts her fingers under Ben’s chin and tips his head up. He looks at her, wide-eyed and flushed and quiet. It’s like with that one little kiss to his temple, she’s stolen all his words away from him.

She leans in close and then hesitates, waiting for him to pull away, but he doesn’t. She presses closer and kisses him properly, her mouth against his. He shivers again, like he can’t stop it, and gasps against her.

As soon as she tilts her head to deepen the kiss, though, he pulls back, his hands wrapping around her arms, holding her close but keeping her back at the same time. “Bev, Bev, wait, I- Oh, God.”

“Ben, hey,” He seems nervous, so she tries to move a little closer again, but he keeps her at arm’s length.

“No. I can’t believe I’m going to say this,” he starts, laughing a little, his eyes on the ceiling. “I have to, though. If this is just - I just can’t do this. Tonight. Because it’s going to feel like it’s only happening because we might all- I just can’t. I can’t do that.”

That makes her a little tense, too. She pulls back. He tries to hang on. “Let go of me, Ben.” Her voice takes on a hard edge, and she didn’t mean it to - but it’s a holdover still, from Tom. Ben drops his hands immediately, like she’s burned him.

“Sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t know why you came to me. I thought - even after what you said today, I thought you’d probably go to Bill.”

She knows, knows that he’s kind and he doesn’t mean it the way that it sounds, but it hurts anyways. She stands back up, wraps her arms around herself, and looks at the wall. “I didn’t come here to try and fuck, Ben, I wasn’t looking for that. I couldn’t sleep.”

“Beverly.” His voice is so gentle. She looks over to him, and he stands up, approaching her slowly. He doesn’t reach out for her, probably because of the way she told him off last time. She appreciates it more than she knows how to say. “You have to know I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just- I’m so bad at this.”

Bev turns fully to face him, and sighs. “I know you didn’t mean it like that. It just- I really didn’t come here looking for anything other than you. I thought about going to anyone, but I decided to come to you. It doesn’t have to mean anything you don’t want it to. We don’t have to do anything. I just don’t want to be alone. I don’t think you want to, either.”

“No. You’re right.” He steps a little closer, and reaches out. He still doesn’t touch her until she nods at him. Then, he places one hand gently on her shoulder, and another on her waist, pulling her closer. “All I was trying to say is that-” He huffs out a sigh, looking down for a moment. When he meets her eyes again, he looks determined. “I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone but you, Beverly Marsh. And I think if you broke my heart, I’d still love you til the day that I died.”

That makes her blush. No one’s ever said anything like that to her. Ben is the only person who has ever loved her like this, without the expectation of reciprocation. “Ben.” She reaches up, and places a hand on his face. “I didn’t - you didn’t even remember me.”

He shrugs, and smiles, something small and self-deprecating. “I didn’t have to. I could count on my hands the number of people I’ve gone home with. There’s not many. And I bet if I looked back, every single one of them reminded me of you, somehow. When we were kids, it was- it was like I loved you with something too big for any 13 year old boy. And it never went away.”

She brushes her thumb over the corner of his mouth, and he just looks at her. His eyes are big and open and searching. There’s still a hint of a blush on his face, right over his cheekbones, and his expression reminds her of when they were kids and she woke up from the deadlights. He’s practically shining right in front of her. “I can wait. Until after. For - whatever you want to wait for. I want you to be comfortable. But I do… want. And I- I’m sorry I don’t have some epic love story to give you back. I just have myself. And the fact that somewhere, deep down, I remembered that poem you wrote. It was the most beautiful thing anyone ever gave me.”

He smiles at her, all gentle and beautiful again. She leans in, unable to stop herself, and kisses the corner of his smile just to feel him shiver again. Then, she pulls back.

She takes his hand, and pulls him back towards the bed. “Come on. Let’s lay down for a while. No funny business, I promise.” Her grin turns just a little conspiratorial at that, and it’s enough to make him blush properly again. She hopes she gets to see that blush a lot more often in the future.

“You’re gonna be the death of me, Beverly Marsh.”

“Live a little, Ben Hanscom.”

* * *

Richie races Eddie up the stairs because if he doesn’t keep his feet ahead of his fucking brain, he’s going to remember that everything they’re doing is only happening because they might die tomorrow. If he’s running, if he’s making it all a joke, he can watch Eddie laugh and let the sound chase all the consequences out of his head.

He makes it to the door, but he’s still getting it open when Eddie comes up behind him, plasters himself against Richie’s back and giggles, right between his shoulder blades. It makes Richie arch back into him a little, humming. “Babe, come on, let’s get through the door first,” Richie tells him.

“Oh now you don’t want to give all our friends a show?”

God, Eddie is so dangerous like this. Richie would give him anything on even on a run-of-the-mill day, but Eddie all fired up on adrenaline from the day they’ve both had, openly affectionate and teasing- Richie feels like he’s going to lose it before they ever get to the bed. If he can’t get the goddamn door open, he’s going to end up humping it just for some kind of relief.

Finally, though, he figures out the fucking lock and they stumble inside, already all tangled together. Eddie gets a hand in his shirt collar and tugs him down into a kiss, both of them desperate and overwhelmed.

He bites at Richie’s mouth, and Richie melts into it. He tugs Eddie closer, picking him up just as they stumble towards the bed, so as his own legs hit the mattress, and he sits down, Eddie ends up straddling him, in his lap.

“I thought I was supposed to brush my teeth,” Richie mutters as Eddie pulls back.

“Shut up.” Eddie presses back in and kisses him that time like he’s proving a point, like he’s doing it just to be contradictory. It makes Richie feel like he could spontaneously combust and he’d be thankful for it - like maybe he’s already on fire.

Eddie bites at his lower lip again, and Richie cants his hips upwards, pressing up against Eddie. Eddie’s starting to get hard already, Richie can feel it, and that gets Richie there, too, surging up so he can kiss back, placing one hand on the back of Eddie’s neck and pulling him down and in. 

“I love having you in my lap,” Richie mutters into the kiss.

That makes Eddie grind down against him, a particularly filthy twist of his hips where he rubs himself up and down against Richie’s suddenly very hard cock. “You want me to ride you?” Eddie asks, moving to kiss at Richie’s jaw.

The best thing about having regular sex with Eddie has been how steadily he’s picked up dirty talk. At first he was so overwhelmed and sometimes nervous that he barely spoke, but now it’s all just an extension of their back and forth. Eddie says filthy things knowing that it drives Richie crazy, and Richie tries his best to drive him crazy right back.

Still, as much as Eddie’s words make Richie press up into another kiss and lick into his mouth, he also takes that one moment to think about what he really wants. Even when sex with Eddie is awkward or sloppy, it’s still fucking fantastic. In retrospect, that probably has something to do with the fact that Eddie was the star of every adolescent fantasy that Richie ever had - his brain is practically hardwired to find Eddie the hottest person alive, even subconsciously.

There’s still one thing, though, that Richie really wants, that he can never seem to get enough of, and if this might be the last time - well. “Can I suck you off?” Richie asks, more breath than word, panting it out against Eddie’s jaw.

It makes Eddie rock against him again. “Richie, shit- Yeah-”

“Don’t worry, we’re not gonna stop with that, I wanna- Let’s just start here.”

Reluctantly, Eddie stands up on visibly unsteady legs and starts to shrug out of his cardigan. Richie whistles at him, only joking a little bit, and Eddie snorts and shimmies his shoulders as he takes off his shirt, too.

Richie sits on the bed, watching him, irrepressibly fond, until Eddie turns, still in his underwear.

“Hey asshole,” Eddie tells him, smiling. “Take your clothes off?”

“Oh, right, yeah.” Richie stands, then, and strips, too, yanking his shirt off over his head and shimmying awkwardly out of his pants and underwear. He sits down only to look up and find Eddie watching him with his mouth softly open. Richie blinks. “Take a picture, babe, it’ll last longer.” He winks.

Eddie scoffs, and rolls his eyes. “I can’t believe I have sex with you. You do things like that and something in my broken brain just finds you fucking irresistible, I hate it so much.”

“You love me.” Richie tells him, only it comes out a little more vulnerable than he intended.

Crawling onto the bed, Eddie gets on his knees next to Richie and presses their foreheads together, briefly. “I love you. So much,” Eddie tells him earnestly. He leans in, gives Richie a kiss so gentle it makes his toes curl against the carpet. “Now please follow through and suck my dick or I’m gonna kill you.”

He says it almost sweetly, and it makes Richie laugh, leaning forward to press his face against Eddie’s neck. Pressing his neck there turns to kisses, turns to biting a mark against Eddie’s freckled shoulder, drawing lines between the freckles with his tongue.

Eddie leans back against the pillows, and Richie crawls over him on his hands and knees, hovering above him. Richie kisses his way from Eddie’s nipples, down his stomach, down to his hip bones. God, he has a fucking addiction to Eddie’s hipbones. He lingers there, presses against them with his thumbs, sucks a mark against one of them just to feel Eddie tremble under his fingers.

“Rich-”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m getting there.”

Still, with a grin, Richie looks up at Eddie and moves even lower, down to Eddie’s thighs. He presses there with his hands, lays down properly between them, and then nuzzles against one. He noses at the crease of Eddie’s thigh, sighs against the warm skin. Finally, Eddie pushes his fingers into Richie’s curls and tugs him precisely where he wants him.

It’s exactly what Richie was waiting for - that moment Eddie snaps and gets bossy. It’s what Richie lives for. All the fight goes out of him, just like that, all the tension easing from his own body, and he leans down to lick messily over the head of Eddie’s cock.

Eddie is hard and leaking already, and Richie can taste him against his tongue. He hums out something like a moan and lets it vibrate against Eddie’s skin. Eddie’s grip on his hair tightens.

Richie shifts his weight and reaches up to take Eddie’s cock in his hand, directing it so he can get it properly in his mouth, suck the head between his lips.

He presses the tip of his tongue against the tip of Eddie’s cock, licks at it, swirls his tongue around, and Eddie’s thighs twitch on either side of him. One of Eddie’s legs comes up and he hooks it over Richie’s shoulder, the heel digging into his back.

“Richie, fuck-” Eddie chokes out.

Richie can tell he’s trying to be quiet. He thrives on it.

Even after two years, there’s no way in hell Richie can deepthroat anything. Still, he pulls back enough to wet his own lips, looks up at Eddie, and leans back in to sink his mouth down as far as he can. Eddie’s head is thrown back, his hair starting to get messy against the pillow, and the line of his throat looks incredible in the lamp light. Richie covers the rest of Eddie’s cock with his hand, bobbing his head as he moves.

Eddie twitches again, makes a desperate noise that comes out almost like a squeak because he’s trying so hard to stay quiet, and the grip he has on Richie’s hair starts to hurt, just a little. Richie pulls off again, goes back to licking at the head.

“Rich, Rich, stop it, I’m - if we’re doing something else we should do it, maybe.”

“You wanna fuck me?” Richie asks. He didn’t necessarily mean to say it, or at least not to be so blunt, but he can still taste the salt of Eddie’s skin on his tongue, and he’s feeling now, how hard he is, too. How close, even just from rubbing himself against the bed in shivery little thrusts while Eddie was in his mouth.

Eddie blinks at him. He sits up, and pets at Richie’s head, almost like an apology for all the tugging. Then he leans down and Richie leans up, so they can kiss. “You sure you want it like that?”

Richie nods, easily, his nose brushing against Eddie’s in the process. His own mouth is still a little open, and he’s panting, he’s practically gagging for it, and it’s sort of embarrassing. Still, here he is with the first person he ever loved or wanted to have sex with, and it might be the last time they ever get to do this. He knows what he wants. “Please, Eds.”

“Okay, sweetheart.” Eddie kisses at his cheek, then at his temple. “You’re topping on our wedding night, though.”

That makes Richie laugh, loud and sudden, and he pulls Eddie close to try and muffle it in his hair. “You say that like we’re not gonna fuck like at least three times.”

“Three times huh?” Eddie teases, moving to dig through the bag beside the bed, pulling out the lube. “Somebody’s feeling ambitious for 40.”

“I get to marry you, I’ve gotta keep you satisfied, babe. Gotta hold you down.”

Eddie laughs at that, giving Richie a grin as they both switch places as Richie leans back against the pillows.

As Eddie kneels between Richie’s legs, and nudges them apart, he’s still smiling a little. He puts one of Richie’s legs over his shoulder, then rubs soothingly at Richie’s thigh before he coats his fingers and pushes two inside, gently.

It’s been a while, but not so long that the two fingers are really uncomfortable, especially because Eddie moves slowly and knows well enough to use plenty of lube. The oddness of it quickly turns to something pleasurable, Richie starting to nudge his hips up with every press of Eddie’s fingers.

Eddie sighs, and starts talking.“Can’t believe I get to do this. I can’t believe you wanted to blow me. It’s - God it was hot enough when you were just the hot guy I met in New York. The guy that got up onstage and gave me those looks while he sang Eddie Money at karaoke but now it’s… I hope you know how lucky you are I didn’t shoot off half a second after you got your mouth on me.”

Eddie shifts his hand, hooks his fingers, and nudges against Richie’s prostate.

Richie arches, pushing up off the bed, and he pants as he looks down at Eddie. Eddie’s watching him, his eyes big and dark in the dim room, and his mouth is open again, still pink and damp from kissing and panting and licking his own lips. The marks Richie left are starting to show up. He looks like a fucking wet dream come to life.

“Why’s that, Eds?” Richie finally manages to ask him. “I’m just that irresistible?”

For that, Eddie twists his fingers again, drives them in deep, and makes Richie curse and arch up again. It makes Eddie grin at him, crooked. “Guess so. Probably has something to do with the fact that you were the person I thought about the first time I jerked off, which is what I was getting to.”

“No way,” Richie says, breathless. “No fucking way, Eds, Eddie, you can’t say shit like that I’ll die, I’ll die right here on this bed.” That makes Eddie press in with another finger, and Richie whines, all high-pitched and useless. 

“It’s true,” Eddie insists, even as he keeps up the motion of his fingers, even speeding up a little. “You were always talking about shit like that - and it took me a long, long time before I ever did it. I thought it was bad for you, but you never shut up about it. And so the first time I did it, I couldn’t stop thinking about you, and I was so embarrassed - the next day, we were supposed to go to the quarry, and I told you I was sick with the flu. And I laid in bed the whole day and thought about you swimming down there, shirtless, and couldn’t figure out why-”

“Eddie, Eddie, fuck, stop, stop it, I’m gonna-”

Eddie does stop, swiftly pulling his fingers out. He moves, scratching at Richie’s stomach with his lube slick fingers. “That does it for you, huh?”

“You have no fucking idea. I wasn’t kidding, I think you killed me. Get inside me, or I’m gonna actually fucking die.”

Smiling again, Eddie gets more of the lube on his hand and coats himself with it. He shivers as he does, and Richie sits up enough to watch his hand move over his cock.

Eddie shifts onto his hands again, and nudges at Richie until he rolls onto his side.

Richie, though, rolls back, and stops him. “Wanna see you. Don’t - don’t tell me I’m too old for it, just figure it out, if I hurt my back I’ll just tell everyone it was the bed.”

Snorting, Eddie smiles down at him, but he doesn’t argue. He rearranges them again, goes back between Richie’s legs, and grabs two of the pillows from the top of the bed to slide them underneath Richie’s hips.

Once they’re both situated, Eddie shuffles forward on his knees, and presses inside.

He goes slowly, and Richie shudders, biting his own lip to stop himself from making any embarrassingly loud sounds. Normally, that’s not even the part that gets to him, but now the slow push is driving him crazy, because it’s Eddie, but not only that, it’s _ Eddie _. In some way, it almost feels like losing his virginity all over again at 40.

Eddie gets his hips flush against Richie’s ass, and he pauses there.

Richie opens his mouth, and the words practically fall out. “I used to think about you, too. You were - you were the first guy I ever liked, you were like my gay awakening, you and those fucking shorts-”

Slowly, Eddie draws back and presses back in. “Keep going. Wanna hear you.”

He tries to whisper, as well as he can, knowing he can’t shout, but if Eddie wants to hear him, he’s going to talk. “Shit, fuck, okay- I thought about kissing you all the time, it felt like it was all I ever thought about in high school, how fucking bad I wanted to kiss you, I would have done anything, anything for it. And after you moved away, as I got older, it was almost like it was safer, even when you wouldn’t answer my letters I’d think about you and I’d get off thinking about you, wondering if you still had those freckles on your shoulders - can’t believe they’re still fucking there-”

He gets rewarded with another sharp thrust, this time in exactly the right spot, and he cries out, unable to stop himself, his mouth hanging open.

Quickly, Eddie reaches up with one hand and puts it over Richie’s mouth. Whining, Richie takes it in his own and then sucks Eddie’s fingers into his mouth, licking at them as he uses them to muffle himself.

“God, fuck, Rich, you’re so fucking hot, you’re the only- only person I ever loved.”

Richie licks at Eddie’s fingers one more time, then pulls them out of his mouth. “Me, too. Me, too.”

Eddie takes his wet hand and wraps it around Richie’s cock, tugging at it as he speeds up. “Come on. Come on, Rich, let go for me.”

Richie turns his head, trying now to muffle himself against the sheets and pillow, panting out noises with each thrust of Eddie’s hips. They’re going so hard now the pillows underneath Richie are starting to slide out from under him, and he doesn’t even care. Eddie’s fucking him right into the mattress, and the sheets are sticking a little to his skin with all the sweat.

For another minute or so, the only sounds in the room are the slick sounds of their bodies, Eddie’s hand on his cock and Eddie moving inside of him, and both of them drive Richie closer and closer. Eddie is panting, too, and moving at just the right angle, and Richie can feel himself tense up and his legs wrap around Eddie’s waist as he finally comes.

It lasts for a while, longer than usual, and Richie has to press his face completely in the pillow just to keep from shouting. Eddie’s still fucking him, going and going for another few thrusts to get him through it, and then he tenses, too, and Richie can feel the warmth inside of him.

Eddie pulls out quickly, collapsing beside Richie on the bed, and Richie shivers.

“We’re taking a shower before we sleep. That’s non-negotiable.”

“I think I know the rules of the Kaspbrak-Tozier household by now,” Richie tells him, rolling onto his side just to squint at Eddie.

“Mm, Kaspbrak-Tozier,” Eddie says, turning to face Richie again with a smile. He leans in close and pulls Richie in for another kiss, soft and sweet. It never seems to bother him when Richie sucks him off and then kisses him - it’s a little thing, but it always makes Richie feel just a little better, makes him relax a little bit more.

“That’s our name, don’t wear it out!” Richie mumbles, a little too tired to give it the enthusiasm it deserves.

Eddie shoves at him, then, nudging him out of the bed. “Come on, come on old man. Let’s get in the shower before you fall asleep on me.”

“Whatever you say.” Richie stands up, and then goes to drape himself over Eddie’s back, making him stumble a little as they walk to the bathroom.

Eddie laughs, and he doesn’t push Richie away.

* * *

In the seven years Mike had spent in Derry by himself, he had missed all his friends. Every day he would see something or read something that made him think of at least one of them.

None of that changed the fact that he missed Bill Denbrough the most.

He’d felt silly back then, like it was just the remnant of a childhood crush he couldn’t shake. He would go to the Falcon and ignore almost everybody he saw. Sometimes he would glimpse someone out of the corner of his eye, someone that looked like Bill at the right angle, and he would think about starting a conversation, but that felt even more pathetic.

For seven years, he hadn’t had a serious relationship or serious feelings, and then Bill Denbrough had stumbled back into his life and kissed him, and in the process put an end to the whole thing. Not in the sense that it changed anything Mike had ever thought or wondered about, but in the sense that Mike told himself that would be the end of it, and he left.

Now, though, here he is with Bill Denbrough nervous and eager under his hands.

Mike pulls back just to look at him again. The way his hair still falls in his eyes, the way the flush spreads over his face as he struggles to speak. Mike just pushes Bill’s hair back for him, and waits, patiently.

“Jesus, Mikey.”

Laughing, Mike tips his head forward, pressing his forehead against Bill’s. “Well we gotta make up for last time somehow, Bill. And my ex-boyfriends should be good for something.”

“For w-what?” Bill asks, leaning in to kiss Mike between words. “For making you the best goddamn kisser in a-all of Texas? That just s-seems unfair.”

“I’m sure someone else could claim that title. Texas was a big place.”

“B-best one in Maine, then.” Bill corrects, pressing back in, again and again like he can’t stop himself. Like he’s desperate, and a little bit drunk on it. It sends a thrill through Mike, all the way down his spine.

He cradles the back of Bill’s head in his hand, brushing one thumb against the skin right by Bill’s ear, and he lets Bill kiss him, over and over.

After a while, Bill pulls back, panting, and then tilts forward again to rest his head against Mike’s chest. Mike pulls him close, one hand still on the back of his head, sliding down to his neck. He tucks his other hand against Bill’s lower back, just to feel the tremble that earns him.

“You alright?” Mike asks him.

“N-never better.”

Chuckling, Mike kisses the top of Bill’s head, then his temple. “Seems like maybe you need to slow down a little. It’s alright if you do. You just said it’s been a long time.”

At that, Bill pulls back, looking at him like he’s crazy. “Mikey, if it’s the l-last night, if anything h-h-happens-”

“What did I just say, Bill? I told you not to talk like that. I told you, too, that if anything happens, you run. I made a promise to myself - not the one I made to you. I promised myself the night you called me that if I came back, I was getting you out of here. I’m gonna do it. So if us taking it easy tonight gives you the motivation to get the hell out of Derry in one piece, I’m not afraid to use that.”

Bill scoffs at him. “Mike you can’t be s-serious.”

“Serious that I won’t have sex with you in the Derry Town House? Yes, I’m serious. That’s not even to mention the fact that Richie and Eddie definitely are, and knowing that is not a turn on for me.”

That makes Bill choke out a laugh, even as he flushes again. “Fucking… Jesus, Mike.”

Grinning, Mike reaches out and pulls Bill close again by his shoulders. “You’re the one that made dirty graphic novels about all of us.”

“Not about a-all of us, just about-”

“Just about me?”

“It’s not like that! You haven’t even r-read them, I just-”

It makes Bill so embarrassed that Mike can’t help but laugh again, throwing his head back as he does, clutching Bill to his chest again. Bill comes easily, pressing close against him as Mike leans back. As his laughter starts to slow down, he gets an idea, and he leans so far back, still chuckling, that they both end up falling back against the pillows, laying together on the bed.

Bill rolls off of Mike and ends up resting beside him, starting to laugh, too. “Weren’t you the one saying we sh-should slow down?”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t make out like teenagers,” Mike tells him, pulling him close again to rest their foreheads together. “You moved away a little too soon for that, I missed my chance. Then you just kissed me in The Falcon and ran away.”

“I’m n-never gonna hear the end of that one, am I?”

“Mm, no way, not after all this.”

“Guess that’s a fair p-price.” Bill murmurs, leaning in again for another soft press of lips.

Now, while they’re kissing, Bill doesn’t seem like he’s in a hurry. He lingers, and he lets Mike kiss him back, soft and slow. Bill seems to melt under his touches, like all the stress and paranoia of the day is falling away from him while they lie there together. For Mike, it feels like a gift. For him to get this, after so long, and to be able to feel the way it’s helping Bill relax again. It’s more than he’d even realized he wanted.

It’s nothing like his childhood fantasies. It’s so much better.

They’re kissing with no end goal, with no further intentions, but the longer it goes on, the more pink Bill’s face gets from Mike’s stubble, the more he whines as Mike sucks kisses against his throat and his jaw, the more Mike considers letting it go further. Maybe Bill doesn’t need the motivation after all. Maybe just this could be enough to get him to leave.

Mike starts to roll onto his back, to pull Bill with him.

Then there’s an awful banging coming from down the hall.

Mike pulls back abruptly, and Bill goes tense and wild-eyed like he’s already seen something. Quietly, Mike puts a hand on his wrist, trying to keep him still. The banging noise comes again. Still no other sounds.

Then, after the silence, Eddie cries out, clearly terrified, and it’s all Mike needed to hear. He jumps out of bed and runs out the door.

* * *

Just laying on a bed with Beverly Marsh is more than Ben Hanscom ever even dreamed that he’d get. When they were kids, when he was left in Derry after she’d gone, he still remembers sometimes he’d lay in his own bed, on his side, and close his eyes and imagine her there. The way her fiery red hair might look in the moonlight. The way she might smile at him.

He never went further than that in his head, when he thought of her. It was less the thought of anything they might do, and just the very thought of her - of being close to her at all. Of having even a moment of her undivided attention.

Now he has all of it. Even when he’s quiet like this, she’s looking at him, that soft little smile on her face. The frizz of her hair makes a sort of halo around her head in the lamplight. It makes Ben’s chest ache.

“God you’re so beautiful,” he says without really meaning to.

Her smile widens, and she laughs at him a little. It’s not unkind, though. “Oh come on, be a little more creative than that, new kid on the block.”

That makes Ben laugh, too. “I don’t know, I- I only ever wrote that one poem. We’d been learning about haikus, and I thought about you, and I think the syllables and having you as inspiration combined to make it easy. I’m not a writer.”

“No, you’re an architect. And you were on the cover of Time Magazine. You’re a big shot. I bet your buildings are beautiful.”

Ben shrugs. “I like them. They’re… open, usually. Lots of natural light. I think I got that from the Derry Library. It was one of my favorite things, those big open windows. They used to let in all the sunlight in the summer, it was like all the good parts of being outside. I watched everything through those windows.”

Bev reaches out for him, and she brushes her fingers through his hair again, just over his ear. “I’m glad we all met you that summer. I’m glad we got you out of there. Even if the windows are pretty.”

“You think- you think our clubhouse is still there? The one I built for everyone?”

“The one out in the barrens?”

Ben nods, and Bev laughs, like music in the quiet room.

“God, I don’t know, Ben. It might have collapsed by now. Not to insult your architectural skill, but it’s been over 20 years at least since anyone went down there, right? And underground like that, it might be long gone.”

“Maybe you’re right,” he admits. Her hand moves down to his face, and he turns his head, nuzzling into it. “The place was never what mattered with all of us. The clubhouse or the quarry or that barn out at Mike’s place or Bill’s garage. Anywhere was home when all of us were there.”

“Ben Hanscom you are such a sap,” she tells him, but her eyes are shining a little. She scoots closer on the bed, sighs and presses so close they’re practically sharing breath. “If I kiss you, are you going to run away again?”

“I thought you said no funny business.”

“Is kissing funny business?”

“You just want to shut me up.”

She laughs, her nose wrinkling as she does. She leans forward to nudge her nose against his, and stays right there, within reach, and not kissing him. “I’m perfectly happy to lay here and trade stories all night. I just wanted to kiss you again. You’re pretty kissable, new kid.”

“I wish you’d stop calling me that,” he tells her, and doesn’t mean it at all.

“I think you love it.”

Of course she can see right through him. He sighs, and closes his eyes. “Okay.”

He can’t watch her lean in again, or watch her look at him any more, or he’ll combust. He’ll leave nothing but ashes in this bed in the Derry Town House, and all his friends will have to go on without him to do the most terrifying thing they’ll ever have to do.

Then Bev’s lips are against his, and he’s not thinking about tomorrow at all. All he can think about is her - how soft she is, her lips and the fabric of her sleep shirt under his fingers. How she smells, all fresh and sharp like a cedar wardrobe with just a hint of citrus. The press of her lips is soft, too, slow and gentle like she’s still worried he’ll run off.

After just a handful of moments, she pulls back. “There. See? Not the end of the world.”

“It’s just weird. Getting something you dream about your whole life - it’s not really what I expected. Mostly because I didn’t expect it.”

One of her hands is on his back, now, and she slides it up and down over his spine. “You’ve got to let go of some of that. It can’t be good for you. Even if you do feel better about some things now, Ben, it’s just - it’s not about deserving things. You know that, right?”

The way she says it, the words come out heavy. It’s like she knows how it feels, too. It doesn’t make any sense to him, that Beverly Marsh could exist and not realize she deserves the whole world on a platter, and someone who’ll give it to her. He knows it isn’t that easy, though, and it never has been, for any of them.

She searches his face, and she brushes her fingers through his hair.

Ben sighs, and places a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. “I know that, Bev. I know. I’ve… probably got some stuff to work on. I think all of us still do. Forgetting the biggest chunk of your childhood trauma and only remembering it at 40 doesn’t exactly make for smooth sailing.”

That makes Bev laugh again, and she kisses him, just a swift little peck. “I have a feeling you’re right about that.”

The first kind of thudding sounds come then, and Ben ignores them. They sound far off, on one of the other floors, and God only knows what some of the others are getting up to.

Then the yelling starts.

Bev looks at him, and they both freeze, wide-eyed. It could be nothing - it could just be Richie and Eddie. It doesn’t sound like their normal loud, though. It doesn’t sound teasing and playful. It sounds awful. Terrifying.

They hear more footsteps, running, and more shouting, and that’s when they both manage to spring up and make their way to the stairwell and start down it.

* * *

Richie’s asleep when the knock comes at the door. Eddie’s had a secret theory for years that if they ever had to move back to California for Richie’s career, Richie could probably sleep through a fucking earthquake.

Eddie stands up, and stretches. He fumbles around and grabs his glasses from the nightstand. He’s feeling sore in all the right places, still sleep-warm and contented. His own hair is a little damp still from the shower he and Richie took. They’re both only half-way dressed, Richie in just briefs, Eddie in a t-shirt and boxer briefs. After they’d gotten out of the warm water, they’d been exhausted.

He scratches at his own stomach and rummages around for real shorts to wear over his underwear so he doesn’t scar any of their friends. “Sorry, be there in a minute, we fell asleep,” he calls out to whichever of the losers is behind the door. From the bed, he hears a quiet snuffling noise - Richie edging towards waking at the sound of Eddie’s voice. It’s sort of cute. Eddie glances over at the bed and smiles at him. “Oh, don’t worry, lazy, I’ll get it.”

When he makes it to the door, suddenly, something feels off. He pauses. There’s breathing on the other side - heavy, panting breaths. It doesn’t sound like anyone else.

Eddie puts his hand on the doorknob. “Who is it?”

The panting stops. “Front desk. There’s an issue with your bill.”

The voice is oddly familiar. It sends a shiver up Eddie’s spine. He stumbles back from the door. “Richie? Rich? Can you get up, please?”

There’s a banging at the door - loud, and pounding.

Finally, Richie sits up, his curls all askew. “Eds? What is it?”

“Get your fucking glasses on. And a shirt, or something there’s - there’s something at the door, I don’t know what the fuck it is. Shit.” Eddie doesn’t want to turn his back to the door, so instead, he starts glancing around the room, trying to think of the closest thing he has to a weapon. Eventually, he has the forethought to dart into the closet and grab the iron. It’s the best thing he can come up with under the circumstances.

“What?” Richie’s still rubbing at his eyes, confused, when the banging on the door starts again. The door shakes with it, this time, and Richie yelps. Then, looking annoyed, he leans down to the floor, grabs a shirt, and throws it on. “Hey, asshole, look-”

“Richie, wait, stop!”

But it’s too late, Richie goes and throws open the door, and Henry Bowers is standing behind it.

It’s funny, almost, because it couldn’t possibly be Henry Bowers, because he’s supposed to be in the state hospital, and Eddie shouldn’t be able to recognize him, but he’s standing there, and Eddie just immediately knows innately that it’s him. Maybe the fucking mullet helps, but regardless, Eddie has a single slow-motion moment of clarity, where he goes _ Oh, Henry Bowers _.

Then he notices the knife in Bower’s hand, as he raises his arm and the hallway light glints off of it. Eddie dives forward, trying to slam the door, and Bower’s arm gets caught in it.

Richie is somewhere to his left, stammering, and Eddie is trying to duck and dodge Bowers as he swings that one part of his arm wildly through the gap in the door.

“Little help Rich!” Eddie says, and then Richie is beside him, trying to help him hold the door closed.

Eventually they push hard enough that Bowers drops the knife, sort of yelping as he does. Eddie drops the iron to scramble for it, and grabs it in his hand even though he has no idea how to hold it other than the fact that the blade should be pointing outwards.

He left Richie to hold the door, though, and after a moment, Bowers pulls back and rushes forward, and the door comes slamming open and Richie goes sprawling to the floor.

Eddie can’t check on him, though, because Bowers darts into the room and grabs the iron off the floor and starts advancing towards Eddie with it in his hand.

“I’ll teach you to throw rocks, you little faggot.”

At first he’s just confused, because there’s not a rock anywhere in sight, and he hasn’t even hit Bowers with anything yet. Then he realizes that he must be talking about the rock fight, still, from when they were kids.

Eddie remembers his own fathomless rage, and the way it had all come pouring out of him, channeled into protecting the only people he had ever truly loved.

Bowers spots Richie on the floor and turns towards him with the iron in hand, and suddenly it’s like whatever took hold of him that summer comes back. He takes the knife in his hand, steps forward, and drives it into Bowers’ back, right in the center, and somehow manages to pull it back out again. Blood comes spurting out, onto Eddie’s shirt and his arm, and he backs away.

At first, Bowers makes a sort of choking exhale sound, like all the air’s gone out of him. Then he turns on Eddie, iron still in hand, raised up over his head.

Eddie darts to one side, dodging, and tries to block with his arm.

Unfortunately, that means that Bowers brings the iron down directly on his right arm, on his sore arm, full force.

As he cries out and falls, Eddie can hear the crack and feel it, too. His arm is definitely broken. He drops the knife, somewhere in the process, so he scrambles back on his legs and one good arm, as much as he can, finally crying out for help.

Mike is the first one to run into the room, and he only has time to glance over at Richie and Eddie before Bowers charges at him with the knife back in hand.

Fortunately, Mike reaches up and manages to hold him off, the two of them locked in tension as Bowers tries to press the knife closer to Mike’s face, and Mike tries desperately to hold him off.

Bill comes in behind Mike and cries out, “What the fuck?”

Unfortunately, that makes Mike turn, and the knife goes into his shoulder.

Eddie watches all of this happen as he stands on shaking legs. He finds the iron, the one weapon left in the room, and grabs it in his one good arm.

With Bowers and Mike locked in combat still, and Bill trying to help, Eddie comes up behind Bowers, and brings the iron down on his head.

Bowers drops to the ground like a fucking sack full of bricks.

Mike uses his free hand to put pressure on his bleeding shoulder, and Eddie tightens his grip on the iron. He staggers over to Bowers, and looks down at his face. It’s obvious he’s still breathing. Eddie looks over at Richie, who is just beginning to stir or recover from the shock, or something. He’s looking at Eddie’s arm in abject horror.

Eddie lets go of the iron, right over Bowers’ head.

He doesn’t turn to look at the end result.

“Eddie! J-jesus!” Bill says.

“I’m not taking any fucking chances.” Eddie says, stumbling back over to Richie. The adrenaline starts to wear off right as he makes it to Richie, and he sort of falls down as much as he crouches, wincing as he tries to cradle his arm. “Are you okay, Rich?”

“Eds, your arm.”

Ben and Bev come in, then, and both of them gasp.

“It was B-Bowers. He broke out, apparently,” Bill tells them.

“He stabbed me and he broke Eddie’s arm,” Mike adds.

Richie interjects, “He tried to fucking kill us, is what he did. But Eddie got him first.”

Ben steps into the room, and is the first one to go over to Bowers’ body. He nudges it with his foot, and watches for a moment. Then, he sighs. “Good fucking riddance.”

Bev puts a hand on his shoulder, and Eddie notices that it looks like Ben is shaking. Bev puts her arm all the way around him, and pulls him into a hug while he shivers.

A hand lands on Eddie’s good arm, and it almost makes him jump before he realizes it’s Richie. Richie’s hands start moving over his shoulders, then his torso and his face, checking for injury. “Eds. Did he get you?”

Eddie shakes his head. “Just my arm. He broke my arm. But the blood is all his. I stabbed him when he was going for you. Are you okay? Do you have a concussion or anything?”

“Don’t think so. Just sore.” Richie sits up, and winces, but he does it just to lean forward and press his forehead to Eddie’s. “Sorry I opened the door. I didn’t-”

“You were still half-asleep, Rich, please, it’s okay. He probably would have broken it down soon anyways. Come here.” Leaning closer, Eddie puts a hand on Richie’s face and pulls him into a kiss, just briefly. It’s more comfort than anything - reassurance that they’re both still there, and still breathing.

Then Bill pipes up. “Guys, where’s St-Stan?”

* * *

When he goes upstairs to call Pat, Stan finds he’s in a surprisingly pleasant mood. While it’s true that if tomorrow goes according to plan, it’s probably going to be the worst day of his life, for that moment it’s easy to forget. His brain has enabled his compartmentalization for 27 years, so to manage it for another handful of hours is easy, comparatively.

He changes into his pajamas, and brushes his teeth, and then gets settled into bed with his phone.

He pulls up facetime, calls Pat, and smiles at the sight of his husband’s face.

“Hey, you.” Stan says.

“Stanny, hey. How is everything going, are you still okay?”

Stan smiles softly, comforted by Pat’s visible concern. “Yeah, yeah, everything’s good. This is not the come pick me up right now call, baby, don’t worry.”

“I would be on my way to Maine in a heartbeat, I mean it. I’ll drive, I’ll fly, you just say the word.”

That gets a laugh, and Stan curls up in bed a little, leans in closer to his phone. “I know. I know that. It’s very sweet. Makes me feel like there’s still plenty of spice left in our marriage.”

“Oh, baby, I’d drive to Maine for you,” Pat says, giving the camera a sultry look, and Stan laughs and rolls his eyes.

“God you would fit right in with these idiots. And most of them really want to meet you, you know. Everyone’s dying to meet the love of my life.”

“Love of your life, huh?” Pat parrots back with a big smile.

“Like I didn’t say that in my wedding vows.”

“Still nice to hear. But you were saying everyone wants to meet me. Do you want me to meet them? Are you guys all planning on staying in touch after this?”

In the back of his mind, Stan still remembers what he said earlier that very day - that he’d trade everything away, every happy moment, just to forget again. There’s the possibility that if they leave, they could all forget again. It’s impossible to know for sure how it’s going to work if they actually manage to do what they’re trying to do.

He looks at Pat’s face, and his patient expression. He thinks about the way he’d roll his eyes at Richie’s jokes, the way he and Pat could team up and make Eddie laugh. He thinks about the way that Mike and Pat could probably bond over recipes and cooking techniques. He thinks about Pat explaining his love of teaching to Ben, and Ben listening patiently and nodding. He thinks about sitting with Bev, the two of them watching Ben and Pat talking.

Stan focuses his eyes back on his phone, blinking away the threat of tears. “Yeah. Yeah, I want you to meet them. And we’re invited to Eddie and Richie’s wedding - although I don’t know how much time they’re going to spend on planning, they’ve only been engaged for two weeks, so that might take a while.”

“Richie and-” Pat cuts himself off, giving Stan a surprised smile. “Are you saying you grew up with Richie Tozier from SNL?”

Groaning, Stan collapses back in bed, against the pillows, and listens to Pat laughing.

“Should I be taking that as a yes?”

“Never describe him that way in person, I would never hear the end of it. I know you think he’s funny, but it is incredibly important to me and my personal well-being and our marriage that you never, ever laugh at him in person.” Stan lifts the phone back up to give Pat a stern look.

“The fate of our marriage hangs in the balance over whether or not I laugh at Richie Tozier’s jokes?”

Stan nods at him, seriously. “Yes. I’ll leave you Pat, I swear I will.”

Pat grins at him, and laughs, and Stan sighs, breaks, and laughs too.

There’s a moment where they both get kind of quiet, recovering from their laughter, and Stan just smiles to himself, glancing between Pat’s face and the rest of his room.

“You know I don’t think I’ve seen you like this since college,” Pat tells him.

Frowning, Stan lifts his head up to better address the phone. “What do you mean? I know - I know when I left things were a little rocky, but-”

“I’m not trying to imply anything, Stanny. You’re happy at home, we’re both happy, I just - you seem young again, almost. Lighter. It’s a good thing.”

Stan huffs a little, but he knows it’s true. The other losers bring something out in him he really hasn’t felt since he was a teenager. Unlike some of the others, he really has found happiness and enjoyed his life - but there’s something unique about their group, and the way they talk to each other. There’s something special about the sheer amount of love between all of them.

They move on, after that, because Stan can’t tell Pat what’s really happening, and he asks for a distraction instead. Pat tells him about his classes that day, what his students are up to, his crazy tales of all the teenagers trying to snapchat in class.

Stan laughs, and he smiles, and he loves his husband.

Then he hears the commotion upstairs.

And he freezes.

“Stan? What’s going on?”

He shushes Pat, desperately, and tries to listen.

He can hear banging, and Richie and Eddie yelling. They’re not fighting with each other, though. They would never get that physical, and Stan knows the difference between a real shout and the way Richie and Eddie needle each other. It’s not long before Mike and Bill are yelling, too, and there’s more commotion, and it’s obvious that something is going on upstairs, but Stan stays glued to his bed, staring at his own ceiling and shaking. He’s locked in place, held there by his own fear.

Then, all of a sudden, the stampede of feet is heading his way.

“Stan!"

"Stan the Man!"

"Stan where are you?”

Stan exhales, and Pat is still there, looking confused and alarmed.

The losers all start banging on his door, and he rushes over to open it.

What greets him on the other side is quite the scene.

Mike’s hands are covered in blood, and there’s blood all over his shirt. He has one hand pressed tightly to his shoulder, and Bill has one of his hands over Mike’s hand. Bill has blood on his hands, too, presumably Mike’s. Ben and Bev are standing close together, mostly clean, but wild-eyed and still in their pajamas, and Ben has an arm wrapped around Bev, who has her arms wrapped around herself. Richie has bloodied handprints on his face and arms, but he otherwise looks mostly in tact, just shaky and wide-eyed, too, as he holds tightly to Eddie. Eddie looks worst-off, mostly because he is covered in blood, on his hands and arms and pants and shirt. Even his glasses caught some of the splatter. His arm is clearly broken, just like it was that summer, and he’s trying to cradle it with his other good arm.

For a moment, they all just stand there looking at each other.

“Oh thank fucking Christ,” Richie says, and he reaches out one hand to grab at Stan, and Stan offers him his free hand.

In passing, Stan remembers he still has his phone in his hand. He lifts it up, keeping all the other losers out of frame. “Uh. Pat, baby, I have to - I have to go now.”

“...Is everything okay?”

“Everyone’s gonna be fine, I just can’t really talk about it. Sorry, love you.” He manages to get all the words out before he hangs up and tosses his phone back towards his bed.

Bev presses close to him then and sighs with relief as she kisses him on the temple. “God, Stan, you didn’t show up and we all thought-”

“We thought Bowers g-got you.”

“Bowers?” Stan asks, looking at Bill and then over at Mike. “Should we - should we have this talk on the way to the hospital?”

“Yes please,” Eddie hisses through his teeth.

“Okay, come on then, guys, let’s get everyone to the hospital.”

Ignoring the fact that he’s getting bloodied, too, and that he’s utterly clueless, still, as to what happened upstairs, Stan wraps his arms around Richie and Bev and starts to guide everyone out towards the parking lot, and towards the hospital, while all of them still look utterly shaken.

None of this seems to bode well for their chances in the sewers, because apparently Stan’s first priority has to be making sure his friends don’t die before they even get that far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay first and foremost i am SO sorry this took so long, i promise chapters 6 and 7 will never take me this long again!! real life was truly kicking my whole entire ass for like. a long time lakjsdf and for some reason getting this chapter out just became the most difficult thing in the world but!!! it's finally done now and i'm proud of it, so here it is!!! strap in folks because if you think this one was bumpy, the next chapter's really gonna be a ride.


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